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GEORGE    WASHINGTON 


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The  Meaning  of  History          -       -       -  $1.75 
Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill,  and  Other  Lit- 
erary Estimates         ....  2.00 

The  New  Calendar  of  Great  Men   -    Net  2.25 

Oliver  Cromwell       .....  .75 

Annals  of  an  Old  Manor  House     -        -  1.25 

Byzantine  History  in  the  Early  Middle 

Ages    -------  .80 

William  the  Silent .75 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON 


AND    OTHER 


AMERICAN    ADDRESSES 


BY 


FREDERIC   HARRISON,  M.A. 

HONORARY    FELLOW    OF    WADHAM    COLLEGE,    OXFORD 

VICE-PRESIDENT    OF    THE     ROYAL     HISTORICAL    SOCIETY 

PRESIDENT    OF    THE    ENGLISH    POSITIVIST   COMMITTEE 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON  :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1901 

All  rights  reserved 


7 


COPYRIGHT,   1901, 
BY  THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Norwood  Press 

J.  5.  Culling  &  Co.  —  Berwick  fif  Smith 
fforv/ood,  Mast.,  U.S.A. 


/  am  permitted  to  Inscribe 
This  Volume  of  Addresses  given  in  the   United  States 

to 

His  Excellency 
THE   HON.    JOSEPH  H.    CHOATE 

Litt.D. 

American  Ambassador  in  London 


NOTE 

THE  following  Addresses  were  given  in  February 
and  March,  1901,  at  various  Societies  and  Universi- 
ties of  the  United  States.  The  occasion  of  my  visit 
was  an  invitation  with  which  I  was  honoured  by  the 
Union  League  Club  of  Chicago  to  deliver  the  public 
Address  in  the  Auditorium  of  that  city,  on  the  annual 
commemoration  of  the  birthday  of  George  Washing- 
ton. My  thanks  are  due  to  the  American  Ambas- 
sador in  London,  who  transmitted  to  me  from  his 
friends  there  this  and  similar  invitations  from  various 
Universities,  and  who  adds  to  his  kindness  by  per- 
mitting me  to  inscribe  his  name  on  this  volume. 

The  first  two  addresses  were  in  substance  published 
in  the  annual  Report  of  the  celebration  by  the  Union 
League  Club  of  Chicago.  The  Lecture  on  the  Writ- 
ings of  King  Alfred  was  published  separately  in  May 
last.  The  other  Addresses  have  not  previously  been 
printed. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  George  Washington  and  the  Republican  Ideal  .  .          3 

II.  Abraham  Lincoln           .          .          .          .  .  .31 

HI.  The  Millenary  of  King  Alfred          .          .  .  .41 

IV.  The  Writings  of  King  Alfred  .          .          .  .  .71 

V.  The  Dutch  Republic      .                   .         .  .  .105 

VI.  Recent  Biographies  of  Cromwell      .          .  .  .141 

VII.  Republicanism  and  Democracy          .          .  .  .165 

VIII.  Personal  Reminiscences.          .          .          .  .  .      191 

IX.  Municipal  Government .          .          .          .  .  .219 

X.  The  Nineteenth  Century 237 


GEORGE   WASHINGTON   AND  THE 
REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 


George  Washington  and   the  Republi- 
can  Ideal 

ADDRESS  IN  THE  AUDITORIUM,  CHICAGO,  FEBRUARY  22,  1901 

WE  meet  on  a  day  which  for  more  than  a  century 
has  been  held  sacred  by  the  men  of  this  vast  Conti- 
nent—  the  day  which  ever  increasing  millions  who 
speak  our  common  tongue  will  celebrate  for  centuries 
to  come,  and  hand  down  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion as  a  national  heirloom  and  trust.  The  colossal 
Republic  of  the  West  had  a  Founder  around  whose 
name  gather  memories  more  real  and  solid  than  those 
which  enshrined  the  half-mythical  founders  of  re- 
publics in  antiquity ;  whilst  in  valour,  sagacity,  and 
nobility  of  nature,  George  Washington  was  the  peer 
of  the  most  splendid  heroes  of  the  ancient  or  the 
modern  world. 

The  historian  has  too  often  to  confess  that  the 
statesmen  of  modern  times  have  seldom  presented  to 
us  types  of  that  romantic  heroism,  of  the  chivalry,  the 
purity  of  soul,  the  sublime  surrender  of  self,  which  we 
ascribe  to  a  Leonidas,  a  Marcus  Aurelius,  a  King 
Alfred,  or  a  Godfrey  de  Bouillon.  Too  many  of  the 
chiefs  who  have  made  or  saved  a  nation  have  been 


4          GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

stained  by  faithlessness,  cunning,  ambition,  cruelty, 
and  vice.  It  is  consoling  to  think  —  it  gives  us  fresh 
hopes  of  humanity  to  know  —  that  the  latest  in  the 
roll  of  the  creators  of  nations  has  a  spotless  record  of 
honour  as  a  man,  as  a  soldier,  as  a  statesman ; 

«« Whatever  record  leap  to  light, 
He  never  shall  be  shamed  —  " 

Whilst  his  memory  is  revered  by  the  civilised  world 
in  Europe,  it  is  nowhere  held  in  such  personal  affec- 
tion as  with  the  people  whom  he  defeated  and  whose 
dominion  he  shook  off;  for  all  right-minded  English- 
men now  feel  that  his  work  was  a  real  gain  —  albeit 
a  bitter  lesson  —  to  our  own  nation  ;  whilst  his  noble 
character  and  unsullied  career  as  soldier,  as  statesman, 
as  patriot,  add  new  glory  to  our  common  race.  George 
Washington  is  as  much  one  of  our  great  English 
heroes  as  Alfred  the  Great  or  Shakespeare  is  one  of 
yours.  The  robust  nature,  the  ancestral  speech,  are 
the  common  prerogatives  of  our  blood.  And  as  the 
wildest  dreamer  in  Great  Britain  cannot  conceive  our 
two  peoples  being  other  than  independent  nations 
to-day,  we  have  nothing  but  honour  for  the  hero  who 
achieved  the  happy  and  inevitable  separation. 

I  am  well  aware  that  since,  on  American  soil,  the 
memory  of  Washington  has  been  celebrated  for  more 
than  a  century  by  tens  of  thousands  of  eloquent 
tongues,  I  ought  now  to  pass  to  some  more  general 
theme,  and  not  presume  to  add  my  mite  to  the  vast 
monument  which  ages  of  impassioned  oratory  have 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL          5 

raised  to  perpetuate  his  name.  The  great  historian 
of  Athens  said  in  one  of  his  pregnant  phrases  :  "  Illus- 
trious men  have  the  whole  earth  for  their  tomb." 
How  true  is  it  that  the  whole  American  Continent 
is  the  tomb  of  Washington  ;  for  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific,  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  Behring's 
Straits,  every  inch  of  soil  bears  witness  to  his  life,  and 
is  made  sacred  by  his  immortal  presence. 

In  the  most  memorable  of  all  memorial  orations, 
the  great  Athenian  chief  said:  "  —  no  need  for  prolix 
panegyrics  amongst  men  who  know  it  all  so  well." 
And  I  feel  that  it  is  almost  presumption  in  a  visitor 
to  speak  to  American  citizens  of  the  Founder  of  their 
Republic.  But  since  you  have  done  this  honour  to 
myself — and  indeed  to  my  country  —  in  inviting  an 
Englishman  to  speak  to  you  of  Washington,  it  seems 
to  be  fitting  that  I  should  tell  you  how  he  looks  to 
English  eyes,  how  deeply  his  memory  is  cherished 
in  the  old  country  of  his  ancestors  —  and  of  your 
ancestors. 

I  shall  say  to  you  nothing  that  I  should  not  say  to 
my  own  countrymen  —  nothing  indeed  that  I  have 
not  often  said  to  my  own  countrymen.  Twice  before, 
in  our  own  Hall  in  London,  I  have  given  addresses 
in  the  Centennial  Commemoration  of  Washington 
that  we  held  in  recent  years,  and  I  will  say  now  noth- 
ing which  I  did  not  say  then.  That  name  is  so  great 
and  wide  that  there  shall  be  no  exclusive  monopoly 
in  it.  It  cannot  be  limited  to  his  State  of  Virginia — 
it  cannot  be  limited  to  the  Old  States  of  the  Union  — 


6    GEORGE  WASHINGTON  AND  THE  REPUBLICAN  IDEAL 

it  cannot  be  limited  to  America  itself.  It  belongs  to 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  It  belongs  in  fine  to  Human- 
ity at  large. 

Nor  am  I  about  to  insult  a  noble  memory  by  idle 
panegyric  or  extravagant  words.  Of  all  great  men  in 
history  George  Washington  is  he  whom  it  would  be 
most  unseemly  to  flatter  or  to  canonise.  He,  who 
was  the  soul  of  scrupulous  moderation  and  sterling 
veracity,  should  teach  us  to  treat  him  in  that  same 
spirit  of  self-control  and  truth.  As  the  English  his- 
torian of  the  Georgian  era  has  said  :  "  It  was  the  trans- 
parent integrity  of  the  character  of  Washington  "  which 
enabled  him,  soldier  as  he  was,  to  found  a  democratic 
republic  with  no  shadow  on  it  of  military  despotism. 
It  is  in  the  spirit  of  aiming  at  transparent  integrity 
that  I  shall  seek  to  speak  of  him.  I  shall  not  pre- 
sume to  speak  of  him  as  he  appears  to  American  eyes. 
I  will  try  to  say  what  he  seems  to  our  English  eyes. 
And  perhaps  the  cool  and  independent  judgment  of 
those  who  cannot  claim  to  be  fellow-citizens  of  his, 
and  who  were  once  his  enemies,  may  more  accord  with 
the  unobtrusive  genius  of  the  great  republican  chief 
than  that  unbounded  adulation  in  which  for  a  hundred 
years  he  has  been  addressed  and  canonised  here. 

The  eminent  historian  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 
whom  I  have  quoted  tells  us  this :  — 

"  Of  all  the  great  men  in  history  he  was  the  most  invariably 
judicious,  and  there  is  scarcely  a  rash  word  or  action  or  judg- 
ment recorded  of  him.  No  act  of  his  public  life  can  be  traced 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL          7 

to  personal  caprice,  ambition,  or  resentment.  In  the  despond- 
ency of  long-continued  failure,  in  the  elation  of  sudden  success, 
at  times  when  his  soldiers  were  deserting  by  hundreds,  and 
when  malignant  plots  were  formed  against  his  reputation,  amid 
the  constant  quarrels,  rivalries,  and  jealousies  of  his  subordi- 
nates, in  the  dark  hour  of  national  ingratitude,  and  in  the  most 
universal  and  intoxicating  flattery,  he  was  always  the  same 
calm,  wise,  just,  and  single-minded  man,  pursuing  the  course 
which  he  believed  to  be  right  without  fear  or  favour  or  fanati- 
cism ;  equally  free  from  the  passions  which  spring  from  inter- 
est and  from  the  passions  that  spring  from  imagination.  He 
was  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word  a  gentleman  and  a  man 
of  honour,  and  he  carried  into  public  life  the  severest  standard 
of  private  morals.  There  is  scarcely  another  instance  in  his- 
tory of  such  a  man  having  reached  and  maintained  the  highest 
position  in  the  convulsions  of  civil  war  and  of  a  great  popular 
agitation." 

In  England  we  are  accustomed  to  draw  parallels 
between  the  career  —  though  not  the  character — of 
George  Washington  and  that,  of  our  great  Protector, 
Oliver  Cromwell,  and  of  the  Founder  of  the  Dutch 
Commonwealth,  William  the  Silent,  Prince  of  Orange. 
All  three  carried  on  in  mature  life  a  long  and  desperate 
struggle  in  a  fierce  civil  war  against  the  tyranny  of  a 
retrograde  king.  All  three,  after  beating  back  the 
armies  of  the  tyrant,  were  chosen  by  their  people  to 
be  the  first  chiefs  of  a  new  Commonwealth.  And  all 
three  showed  an  organising  genius  of  the  first  order  in 
welding  into  a  nation  the  broken  sections  of  the  people 
whom  they  had  saved  from  slavery  by  their  arms. 


8          GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

But  the  parallel  between  William  the  Silent  and 
George  Washington  is  peculiarly  close.  These  two 
in  a  special  sense  created  new  nations.  Their  work 
subsists  to-day  after  more  than  three  centuries  in  the 
first  case,  and  more  than  a  century  in  the  other  case. 
The  direct  and  immediate  work  of  Cromwell  was 
quickly  undone.  His  indirect  and  permanent  work 
has  to  be  traced  in  a  number  of  obscure  and  gradual 
effects.  Oliver  deeply  modified  the  history  of  an  old 
nation :  he  did  not  create  a  new  nation. 

The  analogies  of  William  the  Silent  and  Washington 
lie  in  this.  Each  was  the  soul  of  an  obstinate  contest 
to  secure  self-government  against  a  foreign  monarchy. 
Both  were  men  of  birth  and  wealth,  conservative  in 
spirit,  old  servants  and  soldiers  of  the  foreign  sov- 
ereign. Both  had  to  face  defeat,  disappointment, 
jealousies,  discord,  treachery  and  panic.  Both,  when 
raised  to  supreme  power,  showed  splendid  public  spirit 
and  devotion  to  their  cause,  and  genius  as  statesmen 
even  higher  than  their  ability  in  war.  The  people 
whom  they  led  to  freedom  were  not  so  unequal  in 
number.  But,  whereas  the  nation  which  the  Prince 
founded  remains  after  three  centuries  no  larger  in 
area  or  in  population  than  of  old,  the  nation  which 
Washington  created  is  amongst  the  greatest  on  earth 
—  with  boundless  possibilities  of  development. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  a  grand  point  of  character, 
Washington  will  ever  stand  out  in  history  as  greater 
than  William  —  greater  than  almost  any  statesman  in 
supreme  place  in  the  whole  record  of  the  modern 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL          9 

world.  His  unshaken  devotion  to  right,  his  perfect 
justice,  his  transparent  truthfulness  and  lofty  sense  of 
honour,  will  ever  place  him  above  even  the  best  of 
modern  statesmen  in  virtue.  That  which  sets  him  in 
a  rank  by  himself  among  chiefs  of  state  is  the  unfailing 
honour  and  guileless  candour  of  his  whole  public  career, 
toward  both  home  and  foreign  opponents.  Compare 
the  diplomacy  or  the  policy  of  Washington  with  that 
of  Frederic  the  Great,  or  Richelieu,  or  Peter  the  Great, 
or  Louis  XI,  or  Elizabeth  of  England,  William  of 
Orange,  or  Oliver  Cromwell  —  we  find  Washington  to 
be  ever  what  the  Greek  philosopher  dreamed  of,  but 
never  found  in  the  flesh  —  "  The  man  who  stood  four- 
square, upright,  without  reproach."  It  makes  one 
more  hopeful  of  the  future  and  less  despondent  of  the 
present,  to  know  that,  even  in  these  later  ages,  there 
has  been  found  a  chief  such  that,  in  a  desperate 
rebellion  and  the  birth-throes  of  a  new  commonwealth, 
with  treachery,  intrigue  and  mendacity  around  him, 
tempting  him  to  meet  craft  with  craft,  violence  and 
injustice  with  fraud — "  the  fierce  light  that  beats  upon" 
the  seat  of  a  President  as  it  does  on  a  monarch's  throne, 
can  reveal  no  falsehood,  no  baseness,  no  outrage,  no 
crime. 

I  quoted  a  couplet  from  Tennyson's  grand  ode  on 
the  burial  of  our  Duke  of  Wellington;  and  I  cannot 
help  feeling  how  well  many  of  these  noble  lines  serve 
to  describe  Washington  —  some  of  them  indeed  more 
justly  even  than  Wellington. 

Listen  to  these  :  — 


IO       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

"  O  friends,  our  chief  state-oracle  is  mute  : 
The  statesman-warrior,  moderate,  resolute, 
Whole  in  himself,  a  common  good. 
Mourn  for  the  man  of  amplest  influence, 
Yet  clearest  of  ambitious  crime  — 
Great  in  council  and  great  in  war, 
Foremost  captain  of  his  time, 
Rich  in  saving  common-sense, 
And,  as  the  greatest  only  are, 
In  his  simplicity,  sublime  —  ' ' 

Are  not  these  words  as  true  of  Washington  as  of 
Wellington  —  nay,  perhaps  when  applied  to  Washing- 
ton, less  marked  by  exaggeration  or  pride  ? 

We  often  think  of  Washington  in  connection  with 
our  own  Oliver  Cromwell.  Both  came  of  old  and 
honourable  English  families,  and  it  is  odd  that  it  was 
the  protectorate  of  Oliver  which  drove  the  great- 
grandfather of  Washington,  a  zealous  royalist,  to 
found  a  new  family  in  Virginia.  Both  Washington 
and  Cromwell  were  the  eldest  sons  of  the  junior  branch 
of  ancient  and  wealthy  landowners.  Both  had  only 
elementary  schooling.  Both  were  summoned  before 
they  were  of  age  to  protect  a  family  of  orphans ;  both 
were  in  close  alliance  with  the  gallant  family  of  Fair- 
fax. Both  were  called  after  passing  middle  life  to 
direct  an  obstinate  civil  war  and  then  to  govern  and 
organise  a  broken  and  distracted  nation. 

In  this  matter  the  task  of  Washington  was  in  one 
sense  greater  than  that  of  Cromwell.  England  at  the 
close  of  the  civil  war  was  still  an  organic  whole ;  and 
in  the  army  of  the  Ironsides  it  had  an  overwhelming 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       II 

and  solid  force  of  disciplined  enthusiasts,  such  as  the 
world  has  but  rarely  seen.  Washington's  task  as  a 
soldier  had  been  to  organise  into  an  army  a  floating 
body  of  raw  volunteers,  each  of  whom  thought  him- 
self the  equal  of  every  other  citizen  whatsoever,  and  to 
wring  from  local  and  jealous  committees  the  essential 
supplies  and  funds. 

His  career  as  a  statesman  was  of  even  grander  order. 
In  his  eight  years'  tenure  of  supreme  power  in  the 
new  nation,  he  had  a  great  and  peculiar  task  in  which 
he  amply  succeeded.  He  was  called  not  merely  to 
preside  over  a  nation,  to  administer  a  government  — 
but  to  make  a  nation  —  to  create  a  government.  He 
found  nothing  but  the  raw  material  of  a  nation  and  a 
government.  He  left  these  materials  an  organic  body, 
able  to  live  and  grow.  From  the  first,  there  appeared 
that  antithesis  between  the  central  and  the  local 
interests  which  in  my  memory  has  plunged  the  United 
States  into  a  tremendous  conflict,  and  in  other  forms 
leaves  problems  yet  for  final  solution.  The  conduct 
of  Washington  in  this  antinomy  of  ideas  was  a  per- 
fect model  of  wisdom  and  self-control.  He  himself, 
as  a  man  saturated  with  conservative  and  governing 
instincts,  inclined  to  the  principle  of  a  strong  central 
authority.  At  the  same  time  he  saw  the  deep  bias  of 
the  American  people  toward  a  local  patriotism,  the 
development  of  the  physical  and  social  peculiarities  of 
the  vast  American  Continent,  and  the  need  for  extreme 
moderation  for  the  powers  to  be  conferred  on  any 
central  executive. 


12       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

The  consummate  sagacity  and  dominant  virtue  of 
Washington  united  the  two  parties  and  saved  the 
young  commonwealth  from  a  premature  explosion  of 
the  struggle  which  began  sixty  years  after  his  death. 
His  second  Presidency  was  more  harassing  and 
critical  even  than  his  first.  But  his  power  to  ride  the 
storm  —  to  impress  his  spirit  upon  the  nation  —  not 
by  force,  not  by  eloquence,  not  by  logic,  but  by  the 
apostolic  power  of  a  faultless  character  for  rectitude, 
self-devotion  and  wisdom  —  this,  I  say,  forms  one  of 
the  great  moral  laws  graven  on  the  imperishable  deca- 
logue of  history,  one  of  the  consoling  truths  which 
cheer  us  in  the  task  as  we  groan  over  those  weary 
annals  of  the  madness  of  nations  and  the  ambition  of 
statesmen.  When  the  restlessness  of  factions  sought  to 
flourish  the  Stars  and  Stripes  in  the  face  of  all  comers, 
Washington  upheld  the  banner  he  had  formed  as  the 
emblem  of  neutrality,  peace,  consolidation,  and  financial 
probity.  In  making  these  ideas  the  mottoes  of  the 
commonwealth,  George  Washington  founded  the  in- 
dissoluble union  of  an  organic,  industrial  law-abiding 
nation,  with  a  boundless  power  of  expansion  and  a 
paradise  of  prosperity  before  it,  and  conferred  on  his 
fellow-citizens  a  service  greater,  nobler  and  more  far- 
reaching  than  when  he  led  them  to  victory  against  a 
foreign  tyrant. 

And  the  close  of  such  a  career  was  in  all  things 
worthy  of  its  spotless  record.  To  compel  his  fellow- 
citizens  to  suffer  him  to  descend  from  what  was  a  seat 
of  power  far  above  the  throne  of  monarchs,  to  do 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON  AND  THE  REPUBLICAN  IDEAL   13 

this  in  the  maturity  of  his  physical  and  mental  powers, 
and  solely  as  a  great  example  to  his  successors,  has 
given  the  world  a  new  conception  of  moral  dignity 
and  republican  simplicity.  It  was  no  case  of  a  dicta- 
tor who,  as  the  poet  says,  "  stalked  in  savage  grandeur 
home  "  :  —  it  was  no  Charles  V  seeking  refuge  in  a 
convent  from  disease  and  disappointment.  It  was  the 
one  abdication  of  power  in  recorded  history  that  was 
based  on  public  duty  and  not  on  personal  motive. 
And  now  the  capital  city  of  this  vast  republic  bears 
his  name  ;  and  his  home  and  burial  place  are  become 
the  place  of  pilgrimage  to  the  civilised  world ;  so 
that  he  lies  enshrined  in  the  central  pulse  and  brain 
of  the  nation  he  created,  his  spirit,  we  imagine,  brood- 
ing over  the  council-boards  of  his  successors  :  — 

"  And  so  sepulchred  in  such  pomp  doth  lie, 

That  Kings  for  such  a  tomb  would  wish  to  die." 

The  Roman  historian  left  this  famous  phrase  of  one 
of  his  characters  —  felix  opportunitate  mortis.  How 
much  more  true  is  this  of  George  Washington  if  we 
paraphrase  it  to  mean  —  blest  in  all  the  circumstances 
of  his  end  !  This  came  by  a  quick  and  easy  stroke 
as  he  approached  three-score  and  ten  at  the  height  of 
his  reputation  and  authority,  with  the  prosperous 
future  of  his  country  assured.  How  few  of  the  heroes 
and  creators  of  nations  lived  to  see  even  the  first  fruits 
of  the  work  of  their  lives !  How  few  have  passed 
through  a  career  beset  with  temptations,  perils,  and 


14   GEORGE  WASHINGTON  AND  THE  REPUBLICAN  IDEAL 

dilemmas,  without  once  giving  way  to  a  single  act  of 
folly,  one  deed  of  injustice,  meanness,  or  passion  !  It 
is  the  unique  privilege  of  Washington  that  he  lived 
to  see  the  crown  of  his  work,  and  left  it  to  his  coun- 
try as  a  stainless  record. 

It  is  a  rare  fortune  when  the  hero  can  close  his  eyes 
with  the  confident  hope  that  he  has  not  lived  in  vain, 
with  no  crushing  remorse  that  his  memory  will 
descend  with  a  burden  of  offence  to  generations  un- 
born. Heroes  too  often  die  in  the  midst  of  visible 
disaster,  in  agony,  in  humiliation — and  if  such  great 
souls  could  ever  lose  hope,  we  might  almost  say  in 
despair.  Too  often  their  dying  eyes  are  darkened 
with  gloom  and  gathering  storms.  These  Christs  of 
Humanity  for  the  most  part  die  upon  their  cross, 
unconscious  of  the  future  worth  of  their  lives  and  of 
the  distant  issues  which  were  destined  to  spring  out 
of  their  sacrifice.  We  who  to-day  so  crave  after  vis- 
ible success,  who  are  so  prone  to  measure  every  life 
by  its  practical  result  in  the  present,  who  scorn  the 
labours  which  are  not  cheered  by  the  shouts  of  the 
mob,  with  fame,  with  conquests,  with  gold,  let  us 
remember  that  the  heroes  to  whom  nations  owe  all 
they  prize  have  seldom  any  crown  of  glory  to  dazzle 
their  dying  eyes,  and  too  often  lay  down  their  weary 
heads  beneath  a  crown  of  thorns.  Too  often  they 
expire  with  the  cruel  cry  within  their  hearts,  if  not 
upon  their  lips  —  Eli!  Eli!  lama  sabacthani!  — 
My  God  !  My  God !  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me? 

From  this  last  agony  of  soul  George  Washington 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       15 

was  free,  as  he  assuredly  was  free  from  any  ground 
for  remorse.  But  he  could  little  have  conceived  that, 
within  one  hundred  years,  his  people  would  have 
increased  some  twenty-fold,  or  that  this  great  city 
would  be  standing  on  ground  which  was  then  an 
Indian  wilderness. 

There  is  a  profound  moral  in  the  life  of  George 
Washington  and  his  place  in  the  world's  history. 
Here  is  a  simple  citizen,  by  birth  a  quiet  country 
gentleman,  who  wins  triumphant  success  in  one  of  the 
most  memorable  of  modern  wars,  and  welds  into  a 
nation  a  scattered  body  of  colonists,  so  that  within  a 
hundred  years  they  are  grown  to  be  one  of  the  biggest, 
richest,  most  progressive  people  that  ever  existed  on 
this  earth.  He  himself  is  an  object  of  veneration  to 
more  than  a  hundred  millions  who  are  of  his  race  and 
language  —  even  though  a  third  of  them  are  of  the 
people  he  repulsed  —  for  all  who  speak  our  common 
tongue  regard  him  as  one  of  the  noblest  figures  in  the 
annals  of  their  race.  And  yet,  he  is  no  Alexander  or 
Caesar,  no  Charlemagne  or  Napoleon.  He  was  no 
born  soldier  ;  he  made  himself  a  warrior  by  dint  of  an 
indomitable  nature.  Nor  was  he  a  dictator,  such  an 
one  as  mankind  bow  down  to  as  more  than  man.  And 
yet,  does  history  record  any  result  of  work  so  rapid, 
so  colossal,  so  multifarious  ? 

The  grand  endowment  of  Washington  was  charac- 
ter, not  imagination ;  judgment,  not  subtlety ;  not 
brilliancy,  but  wisdom.  The  wisdom  of  Washington 
was  the  genius  of  common-sense,  glorified  into  unerr- 


1 6       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

ing  truth  of  view.  He  had  that  true  courage,  physical 
and  moral,  that  purity  of  soul,  that  cool  judgment 
which  is  bred  in  the  bone  of  the  English-speaking 
race.  But  in  Washington  these  qualities,  not  rare  on 
either  side  of  the  Atlantic,  were  developed  to  a  su- 
preme degree  and  were  found  in  absolute  perfection. 
He  thus  became  the  transfiguration  of  the  stalwart, 
just,  truthful,  prudent  citizen,  having  that  essence  of 
good  sense  which  amounts  to  true  genius,  that  perfec- 
tion of  courage  which  is  true  heroism,  that  transparent 
unselfishness  which  seems  to  us  the  special  mark  of 
the  saint. 

The  American  commonwealth  was  made  by  the 
halo  of  virtue,  honour,  and  truthfulness  which  seemed 
to  radiate  from  the  very  soul  of  its  first  President. 
May  it  long  continue  to  guide  the  destinies  of  the 
republic !  It  is  character  that  makes  heroes,  more 
than  any  genius.  It  is  character  which  creates  nations, 
more  than  imagination.  It  is  character  round  which 
nations  rally  when  the  stress  comes  on  them,  and  con- 
fusion looms  in  their  midst.  It  is  character,  unselfish- 
ness, honesty,  and  truth  which  in  the  long  run  rule 
the  world  and  determine  its  destinies  sooner  or  later. 
It  may  be  often  obscured,  and  may  be  long  ere  it  is 
fully  revealed.  But  the  foremost  apostle  of  this  sacred 
gospel  of  noble  character  in  these  modern  ages  was 
the  founder  of  the  United  States,  who  was  indeed  a 
star  on  high  of  the  first  magnitude  in  all  that  con- 
stitutes a  grand  and  imposing  nature. 

I  pass  on  to  say  a  few  words  on  that  republican 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON  AND  THE  REPUBLICAN  IDEAL   IJ 

ideal,  of  which  George  Washington  furnishes  the 
eternal  type.  When  I  utter  the  phrase  republican 
ideal  there  comes  into  my  mind  the  memory  of  that 
wonderful  picture  of  it  in  the  noblest  of  all  speeches 
as  recorded  by  the  greatest  of  all  historians  —  the 
Funeral  Oration  of  Pericles  in  Thucydides. 

"  The  republican  government,"  he  says,  "  is  one  that  feels 
no  jealousy  or  rivalry  with  the  institutions  of  others.  We 
have  no  wish  to  imitate  them ;  we  prefer  to  be  an  example  to 
them.  It  is  true  that  our  constitution  is  a  democracy,  for 
it  is  framed  in  the  interest  of  all,  not  of  any  privileged  class. 
Yet,  whilst  the  law  secures  to  all  in  their  private  claims 
equal  justice  without  favour  of  persons,  we  still  recognise  the 
value  of  personal  superiority,  when  a  citizen  is  in  any  way 
distinguished  by  his  attainments ;  and  he  is  raised  to  eminence 
in  the  public  service,  not  as  a  matter  of  privilege,  but  as  the 
prize  of  his  merits.  Nor  again  is  poverty  a  bar  with  us,  to 
hinder  a  citizen  who  can  confer  some  service  on  the  state. 
Public  office  is  a  career  open  to  great  capacity,  however 
humble  may  be  the  station  in  which  it  is  found.  Public  life 
is  with  our  people  absolutely  free  to  all.  In  our  private  life 
we  are  not  suspicious  of  each  other,  nor  do  we  quarrel  with 
a  citizen  who  chooses  to  live  his  own  life  just  as  it  pleases 
himself.  But  whilst  ours  is  the  land  of  perfect  liberty  to 
each  citizen  to  live  freely  as  it  suits  him,  we  are  bound  by 
loyalty  to  the  common  law  which  we  reverence  as  the  voice 
of  the  republic.  We  obey  only  the  law  which  is  ordained  to 
protect  every  man  from  wrong  doing.  And  we  respect  the 
unwritten  law  of  public  opinion  which  visits  those  who  trans- 
gress the  moral  code  with  the  reprobation  of  their  fellow- 
citizens. 


1 8       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

"  Nor  do  we  forget  to  provide  relaxations  after  the  urgent 
labour  of  our  lives.  We  hold  regular  festivals  and  solemn 
thanksgivings  on  the  appointed  days  throughout  the  year. 
In  our  homes  our  mode  of  life  is  cheerful  so  that  we  banish 
all  sense  of  gloom.  The  vastness  of  our  republic  affords  us 
all  the  fruits  and  resources  of  the  entire  earth,  of  which  all 
the  goods  that  it  affords  flow  freely  in  to  us,  and  we  enjoy 
the  products  of  other  lands  as  easily  as  those  of  our  own  land. 
Our  state  is  open  to  the  world  and  is  the  resort  of  men  from 
other  countries.  We  welcome  the  foreigner  who  comes  to 
us,  and  leave  him  free  to  inspect  all  we  have  to  show  him 
and  to  profit  by  all  that  we  can  teach  him.  We  rely  not  on 
cunning  devices  and  secret  intrigues,  but  we  trust  our  own 
right  arms,  our  own  stout  hearts.  We  are  not  ground  down 
by  a  conscription,  which  makes  every  citizen  a  compulsory 
soldier;  yet,  when  the  call  of  our  country  comes,  we  can 
show  a  front  as  brave  as  any,  and  we  prove  to  them  that  the 
volunteer  citizen  in  arms  is  at  least  the  match  of  the  con- 
script who  is  forced  to  pass  his  youth  in  the  barrack. 

"  As  men,  we  love  all  things  that  are  beautiful,  yet  our 
taste  is  for  the  simple  and  plain.  We  delight  in  mental 
culture,  but-  it  does  not  make  us  the  weaker  in  action. 
Wealth  we  use  for  practical  ends  of  a  real  kind,  not  to  boast 
of  or  to  display  to  the  world.  It  is  no  disgrace  to  a  citizen 
to  avow  that  he  is  a  poor  man ;  the  true  disgrace  is  to  be  too 
idle  to  earn  his  own  living.  Our  citizens  do  not  neglect  the 
affairs  of  the  republic,  because  they  are  absorbed  in  the  affairs 
of  their  own  household  and  fortune.  And  those  who  are 
occupied  with  their  private  business  find  time  to  take  a  very 
active  part  in  politics.  It  is  our  way  that  the  citizen  who  is 
utterly  indifferent  to  public  affairs  is  looked  on  as  a  drone. 
It  is  not  for  every  citizen  to  take  the  lead  in  dictating  a 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL        1 9 

policy ;  but  he  is  bound  to  be  a  sound  judge  of  the  policy 
submitted  to  his  acceptance.  We  count  the  true  mischief 
in  public  policy  to  lie,  not  in  effective  discussion  of  the 
platforms  before  the  nation,  but  rather  in  adopting  a  policy 
without  that  knowledge  of  the  facts  which  serious  discussion 
would  impart.  The  gift  of  our  people  is  to  be  able  to  look 
all  round  a  problem  before  we  take  it  up  in  action,  and  then 
to  act  when  reflection  has  done  its  work.  Whereas  we  know 
there  are  people  who  rush  into  difficulties  with  the  heedless- 
ness  of  ignorance,  and  then,  when  they  begin  to  understand 
all  it  means,  entirely  lose  heart. 

"  To  sum  it  all  up  together,  we  may  boast  that  our  com- 
monwealth is  the  school  of  the  civilised  world.  Each  citizen 
of  our  republic  is  endowed  with  the  power  in  his  own  person 
of  adapting  himself  to  the  most  varied  form  of  activity  and 
life  with  consummate  versatility  and  ease.  This  is  no  pass- 
ing and  idle  word,  but  truth  and  fact ;  the  proof  of  which 
lies  in  the  splendid  position  which  our  republic  now  holds  in 
the  world  to-day.  There  is  a  latent  strength  within  us, 
which  ever  rises  above  even  all  that  our  neighbours  expect 
that  we  can  show.  The  enemies  whom  we  overcome  on 
the  battle-field  submit  to  be  defeated  by  a  power  so  great ; 
and  those  who  have  to  bear  our  empire  admit  that  their 
master  is  worthy  to  bear  rule.  Of  this  there  are  ample 
witnesses,  in  those  mighty  monuments  of  our  power  which 
will  make  us  the  wonder  of  this  age  and  ages  to  come.  It 
needs  no  rhetoric  to  prove  it.  Every  land  and  every  sea 
bears  witness  to  our  energy  and  our  valour,  and  on  every  soil 
we  have  planted  eternal  memorials  of  the  good  we  can  do  to 
our  friends  and  the  harm  we  could  inflict  upon  our  foes." 

Such  is  the  type  of  the  republic  painted  by  the 
great  statesman  of  Athens  at  the  zenith  of  her  glory. 


20       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

How  far  it  is  reproduced  —  how  far  it  can  be  repro- 
duced in  our  age,  it  is  not  for  me  to  say.  There  are 
some  features  in  the  picture  which  are  essential  ele- 
ments of  the  true  republic.  The  essence  of  a  republic 
is  a  state  where  power  is  reserved  not  to  privilege  but 
to  merit,  where  it  is  exercised  in  the  sole  interest  of 
the  community,  and  never  in  the  interest  of  any  class 
or  order.  In  the  true  republic  all  authority  is  a  trust 
committed  by  the  commonwealth  to  those  who  are 
held  capable  of  using  it  best  in  the  common  service  of 
all.  Nothing  hereditary  can  remain  in  it.  Birth  can- 
not create  any  privilege,  any  priority  in  honour,  power, 
or  right  of  any  kind.  And  as  in  the  true  republic 
there  is  no  privilege  for  birth,  so  neither  is  there  any 
privilege  for  wealth.  The  service  of  the  state,  even  in 
its  highest  post,  must  be  freely  open  to  every  citizen, 
whatever  his  birth,  his  breeding,  or  his  means,  provided 
only  he  be  capable  to  fill  it.  There  is  no  title  to  any 
public  office  but  personal  worthiness  alone ;  there  is 
no  lawful  object  of  public  activity,  but  the  common 
interest  of  the  community  at  large. 

There  are  three  tests  of  the  true  republic  —  (i)  that 
power  rests  on  fitness  to  rule ;  (2)  that  its  sole  object 
is  the  public  good;  (3)  that  it  is  maintained  by  public 
opinion,  and  not  by  force.  That  is  to  say,  public 
office  —  all  office  from  the  highest  to  the  least  —  is  a 
public  trust — I  mean  a  moral  trust,  not  a  syndicate 
—  and  it  is  not  private  property.  It  must  rest  on 
consent,  not  on  fear,  and  not  on  right  or  privilege. 
This  is  not  the  same  thing  as  an  absolute  democracy, 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       21 

or  an  absolute  equality.  Every  citizen  has  an  equal 
claim  to  serve  the  state,  but  every  citizen  is  not 
equally  able  to  serve  it.  And  if  all  did  actually  serve 
it  at  once,  the  state  would  be  very  ill  served.  The 
true  republic  needs  the  best.  By  best,  it  means  the 
worthiest,  apart  from  birth  or  wealth.  And  the  best 
must  be  acknowledged  as  such  by  common  consent. 

It  must  be  allowed  that  in  ancient  and  modern 
times  this  ideal  republic  has  hardly  ever  been  reached, 
or  only  for  rare  and  occasional  moments.  In  the 
Roman  republic  we  know  how  strong  was  the  hold  of 
privilege,  how  arrogant  were  the  claims  of  birth,  how 
desperate  the  struggles  of  patrician  and  plebeian,  of 
the  nobles  and  the  proletariat.  Indeed,  the  titles  of 
personal  merit  to  public  office  were  often  recognised 
better  in  the  empire  of  the  Antonines  and  the  Con- 
stantines  than  in  the  republic  of  the  Catos  and  the 
Pompeys. 

At  Athens,  the  republic  oscillated  too  often  between 
weak  aristocrats  and  unscrupulous  demagogues.  And 
both  Athens  and  Rome  were  poisoned  by  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  and  a  vast  population  of  slaves,  whom 
the  free  minority  regarded  as  their  chattels  and  prop- 
erty. Both  states  were  really  narrow  aristocracies  of 
free  men  within  unlimited  despotisms  of  serfs. 

The  mediaeval  republics,  in  the  same  way,  rested 
largely  on  force ;  and  in  no  small  degree  on  privilege 
and  birth.  The  United  Provinces  of  Holland  were 
mainly  a  plutocracy,  until  they  passed  into  an  heredi- 
tary monarchy.  In  France,  the  first  republic  of  the 


22       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

Convention  and  the  Consulate  was  mainly  based  on 
force.  Neither  in  the  first  nor  in  the  second  republic 
was  merit  peculiarly  honoured.  And  the  third  republic 
has  been  shaken  to  its  foundations  by  birth,  wealth, 
and  privileged  corporations.  Europe,  alas !  never 
has  given  the  world,  does  not  give  it  now,  the  ex- 
ample of  a  true  and  typical  republic. 

We  must  look  to  the  great  republic  of  the  West  for 
a  closer  approach  to  the  true  republican  ideal.  There 
indeed  we  have  the  principal  conditions  adequately 
and  permanently  recognised.  Office  —  supreme  office 
—  is  absolutely  open  to  every  citizen,  whatever  his 
birth,  or  fortune,  or  social  standing.  And  this  in  a 
degree  which  has  never  been  accomplished  in  ancient 
or  modern  republics.  The  whole  forces  of  the  re- 
public, again,  are  devoted  to  the  public  benefit  of  the 
community  as  a  whole ;  not  to  the  interests  of  any 
order  or  class  of  citizens  —  at  least  this  has  been  the 
case  since  the  final  extinction  of  slavery ;  and,  we 
ought  to  say,  it  is  at  any  rate  the  avowed  purpose  of 
the  majority.  And  as  to  the  third  condition,  you  will 
be  ready  to  say  that  never  did  any  government  rest 
so  entirely  on  consent ;  for  no  government  that  this 
world  ever  yet  saw  was  based  upon  the  free  suffrages 
of  twelve  millions  of  independent  electors. 

I  may  be  asked  why  did  I  qualify  this  statement  as 
to  the  United  States ;  who  can  doubt  that  it  is  the 
absolute  and  perfect  type  of  the  true  ideal  republic  ? 
It  is  not  for  a  foreign  visitor  to  criticise  the  house  of 
his  hosts ;  but  to  the  philosophers  of  Europe  there 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       23 

are  spots  even  upon  the  sun  of  the  American  common- 
wealth. If  it  be  true  that  the  offices  of  the  state,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest,  are  open  to  every  American 
citizen,  is  it  clear  that  they  are  always  filled  by  the 
worthiest  men  that  the  American  continent  has  reared  ? 
If  birth  and  wealth  confer  no  title  to  power,  is  it  cer- 
tain that  they  do  not  sometimes  act  as  a  positive  bar 
to  merit  ?  If  it  be  true  that  the  laws  and  forces  of 
the  commonwealth  are  in  principle  entirely  devoted  to 
the  good  of  all,  is  it  certain  that  they  are  not  at  times 
captured  in  the  interest  of  minorities,  classes,  or  corpo- 
rations ?  At  least,  so  American  authorities  of  high 
reputation  are  believed  publicly  to  maintain.  And 
when  we  come  to  the  third  condition,  that  the  govern- 
ment rests  entirely  on  consent  and  to  no  degree  on 
force,  it  is  reported  in  Europe  that  this  must  be  quali- 
fied somewhat  in  matters  of  colour  and  race.  I  hope, 
before  I  return,  I  may  be  convinced  that  the  report 
is  untrue.  But  in  any  case,  if  consent  and  not  force 
be  the  rule  in  the  United  States,  there  are  now,  we 
hear,  some  eight  or  ten  millions  outside  these  states, 
whom  the  republic  governs,  but  has  no  intention  of 
admitting  to  vote. 

All  these  questions  are  problems  in  the  social  eco- 
nomy of  states  of  which  thinking  men  in  Europe  are 
anxiously  watching  the  solution.  We  wait  to  see 
how  a  vast  democratic  electorate  can  be  educated 
always  to  choose  its  foremost  citizens  in  every  ser- 
vice, even  though  the  foremost  be  the  least  conspicu- 
ous and  the  least  ambitious.  We  want  to  see  how 


24       GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

the  state  is  going  to  deal  with  those  gigantic  corpora- 
tions, which  have  taken  the  place  of  the  feudal  barons 
and  royal  favourites  of  modern  Europe.  And  lastly, 
we  wait  to  see  how  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people  and  through  the  people,  will  be  reconciled  with 
the  government  of  all  these  millions,  whose  consent  is 
never  going  to  be  asked  at  all.  When  we  turn  in 
thought  to  the  ideal  republic  we  must  have  in  our 
mind's  eye  the  highest  possible  standard.  And,  with 
ideal  standards  before  us,  no  actual  republic  that  men 
have  created  can  be  judged  to  have  reached  perfection 
—  no  !  neither  the  Athens  of  Pericles,  nor  the  United 
States  of  President  McKinley,  with  all  the  points  of 
likeness  between  them  that  certainly  exist. 

A  republican  myself  from  my  youth  upwards,  I  am 
one  who  holds  that  the  essence  of  republic  is  more 
bound  up  with  good  government  than  it  is  with  the 
active  share  in  government  by  all  citizens  alike.  The 
interests  of  all  equally  are  more  important  than  the 
rights  of  any  section  or  any  individual.  Pericles  was 
right  when  he  proudly  boasted  that  their  citizens 
could  "  recognise  the  value  of  personal  superiority," 
for  Pericles  led  the  Athenians  far  more  than  followed 
them.  Unless  the  wise  man  leads  and  the  simple 
follow  his  lead,  the  ideal  republic  suffers,  for  its 
power  is  not  awarded  to  the  most  fit.  If  the  blind 
lead  those  who  see,  both  the  blind  and  those  who  see 
fall  into  the  ditch. 

I  am,  I  say,  by  principle  and  by  conviction,  a  re- 
publican, because  the  republic  is  the  inevitable  and 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       25 

final  form  of  human  society  —  the  normal  type  of 
intelligent  citizenship.  It  must  dominate  the  future, 
for  the  future  society  must  be  an  industrial  society. 
Whatever  else  is  doubtful,  it  is  certain  that  the  de- 
velopment of  industrial  life  will  be  the  key-note  of  the 
generations  to  come.  Now  industry  is,  of  its  nature, 
essentially  republican  ;  its  life  is  the  free  cooperation 
of  intelligent  masses  of  men  working  with  good-will  to 
the  common  interest.  Industrial  life  must  ultimately 
eliminate  every  remnant  of  privilege,  of  caste,  of 
monopoly,  of  prerogative ;  for  the  more  highly  organ- 
ised industry  becomes,  the  more  perfectly  it  demands 
the  intelligent  and  free  cooperation  of  workers. 
Slavery  dies  out  before  the  sight  of  free  industry. 
Military  or  feudal  types  of  society,  with  caste,  privi- 
lege, idleness,  mastery  blazoned  on  their  mediaeval 
heraldry,  may  struggle  for  their  ancient  rank,  but  in- 
dustry will  slay  them  in  the  end.  An  industrial  world 
—  and  the  world  of  the  future  grows  more  and  more 
an  industrial  world  —  is  a  republican  world.  And  a 
republican  world  is  one  in  which  the  state  belongs  to 
all,  exists  for  all,  and  lives  by  the  help  and  good-will 
of  all. 

I  began  to-day  with  George  Washington ;  and  I 
come  back  to  George  Washington  at  the  end.  I 
trust  that  the  American  people  will  evermore  look 
back  to  Washington  as  the  type  of  the  republican 
chief.  To  look  back  to  Washington  for  guidance  and 
inspiration  is  to  look  forward  to  the  future,  for  it  is 
to  fix  the  eye  on  the  ideal,  on  the  model,  which 


26      GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL 

neither  you  nor  any  people  on  this  earth  have  ever  yet 
perfectly  attained.  During  the  Presidencies  of  Wash- 
ington, this  republic  was  indeed  guided  by  its  most 
capable  citizen ;  not  by  force,  not  by  submission,  but 
by  persuasion  and  conviction  in  a  way  that  has  hardly 
ever  occurred  in  the  history  of  mankind,  if  it  were 
not  in  the  days  of  Trajan,  King  Alfred,  and  William 
the  Silent.  If  there  is  any  point  in  his  career  to  be 
regretted,  it  is  that  he  did  not  consent  to  remain  in  his 
great  office,  so  long  as  his  own  powers  lasted.  Per- 
sonally I  believe  in  republican  government ;  I  believe 
in  Presidential  rather  than  parliamentary  government ; 
and  I  believe  in  retention  of  office  by  choice  of  the 
citizens  so  long  as  capacity  to  serve  them  remains. 

If  Washington's  Presidencies  give  the  type  of  gov- 
ernment by  the  most  capable,  assuredly  they  give  the 
type  of  government  by  consent  of  the  citizens.  Never 
before  or  since  has  authority  been  wielded  by  man 
over  his  fellow-men  with  more  absolute  unanimity  of 
the  common  desire.  He  anticipated  the  great  social 
reformation  accomplished  in  this  commonwealth  some 
sixty  years  after  his  death,  when  he  freed  his  own 
estate  by  will  from  the  curse  of  negro  slavery.  No 
man  that  ever  bore  power  over  his  fellow-citizens 
shrank  with  a  more  scrupulous,  more  religious  horror 
from  the  thought  of  ruling  by  force  instead  of  by  free 
choice  —  no  man  was  more  truly  the  republican  to 
the  very  marrow  of  his  bones,  and  was  less  the  despot 
or  the  master.  May  the  spirit  of  George  Washington, 
the  just,  the  free,  the  far-sighted  patriot,  inspire  the 


GEORGE    WASHINGTON    AND    THE    REPUBLICAN    IDEAL       1*] 

people  of  this  commonwealth  in  all  their  problems  of 
government ;  guide  them  in  all  the  tasks  they  under- 
take to  wise  and  prosperous  ends ;  enable  them  to 
crown  his  work  when  in  the  words  of  our  English 
historian,  "  he  founded  a  democratic  republic  with  no 
shadow  on  it  of  military  despotism." 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


Abraham   Lincoln 

ADDRESS  AT  THE  BANQUET,  UNION  LEAGUE  CLUB,  CHICAGO,   FEBRU- 
ARY 22,    1901 

MR.  PRESIDENT  and  gentlemen  of  the  Union  League 
Club :  I  feel  myself  overwhelmed  by  the  kindness  of 
the  reception  which  I  have  received  and  by  the  hos- 
pitality which  this  great  institution  has  been  good 
enough  to  afford  to  me.  Although  I  am  now  enter- 
ing upon  the  close  of  my  life,  it  is  the  first  time  that  I 
have  had  the  opportunity  of  crossing  the  Atlantic 
and  seeing  with  my  own  eyes  the  great  republic  which 
I  have  watched  with  great  interest  and  affection,  I  may 
say,  for  the  last  fifty  years  of  my  life. 

I  have  many  American  friends ;  I  have  received 
many  invitations  to  visit  them  in  this  country ;  I  have 
never  been  able  to  accept  those  invitations,  but  when, 
last  autumn,  I  had  the  great  honour  of  being  invited  by 
the  president  of  the  Union  League  Club  to  speak  on 
this  memorable  day,  the  birthday  of  Washington,  and 
that  invitation  was  conveyed  to  me  by  the  highly 
popular  and  respected  representative  of  the  American 
nation  in  England,  Mr.  Choate,  I  felt,  sir,  that  that 
invitation  was  that  which  our  politicians  speak  of,  when 
they  are  called  by  the  sovereign  of  our  country  at 

31 


32  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 

Windsor  Castle,  as  a  royal  command.  I  felt,  sir,  as  if 
I  had  received  a  command  to  speak,  with  however 
humble  a  voice,  to  the  American  people,  to  represent 
the  sympathy  and  regard  that  our  nation  feels  for  the 
American  republic  and  its  infinite  destinies  in  the 
future,  and  above  all,  to  tell  them  of  the  admiration, 
of  the  profound  homage  with  which  the  founder  of 
the  American  republic  is  looked  upon  by  all  rational 
people  of  Great  Britain  to-day. 

I  well  knew  that  it  was  from  no  thought  of  merit 
of  my  own  that  I  had  been  honoured  by  this  invitation, 
but,  having  received  it  and  having  had  the  advantage 
of  listening  to  the  words  of  our  great  orators,  Mr. 
Cobden  and  Mr.  Bright,  whom  I  well  remember, 
whom  I  have  often  heard  speak  with  so  bold  a  spirit 
during  the  great  struggle  that  was  endured  by  this 
nation  in  my  own  youth  —  I  felt  that  I  was  bound 
to  come  forward  to-day  and  say  all  that  in  my  heart  I 
have  felt  of  their  people  and  of  their  great  founder. 
This  city  of  Chicago  appeals  to  me  in  a  very  especial 
manner  above  all  the  other  cities  of  the  United  States, 
for  the  personal  reason  that  I  believe  that  I  am  my- 
self, at  this  moment,  older  than  the  city  of  Chicago ; 
because  I  am  told  in  the  histories  that  at  my  birth  it 
was  a  village  of  but  one  hundred  inhabitants,  and 
when  I  was  a  young  man,  taking  my  degree  in  col- 
lege, it  was  a  very  small  town,  hardly  known  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  But  I  come  now  and  I  see 
that  it  is  undoubtedly  the  second  city  in  the  Union. 
Its  history  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  the 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  33 

material  development  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  its 
wealth,  its  power,  its  population  portend  almost  an 
infinite  development  in  the  future.  I  have  now  been 
able  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  and  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  the  many  friends  here  about  me,  the  cul- 
ture, intellectual  development,  and  patriotic  spirit 
which  this  city  has  already  developed. 

I  was  deeply  interested  this  morning  in  seeing  that 
remarkable  gathering  when  the  young  people  of  this 
great  city  were  brought  together  to  have  instilled  into 
their  minds  ideas  of  true  patriotic  spirit  and  the  sense 
of  devotion  to  their  duties  in  order  to  become  worthy 
citizens  of  this  republic.  Now  I  should  be  very  sorry 
if  it  were  thought  that  what  I  have  been  saying  of 
Washington  to-day  was  in  any  sense  addressed  for  the 
moment  or  to  meet  the  audience  to  which  I  had  the 
honour  of  speaking.  On  the  contrary,  I  well  know 
that  the  spirit  of  Washington,  his  courage,  his  patri- 
otic interest  to  the  people  of  his  country,  have  been 
carried  on  in  later  years  by  his  successors  in  that  great 
office,  and  I  may  recall,  perhaps,  my  own  interest  as  a 
young  man  many  years  ago  during  the  great  struggle 
in  which  this  nation  was  concerned,  the  thrill  of  sym- 
pathy, the  sense  of  shock  which  we  received  when  we 
heard  of  the  death  of  that  great  successor  of  Washing- 
ton, whose  portrait,  I  see,  adorns  the  rooms  of  this 
club.  I  was  present  upon  the  occasion  of  the  an- 
nouncement of  the  death  of  that  great  President  of  the 
republic.  We  called  a  meeting  in  the  largest  available 
hall  in  London,  which  was  draped  in  black  for  the 


34  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 

occasion,  and  our  foremost  politicians  came  forward 
and  spoke  of  the  admiration  with  which  they  had  re- 
garded his  career,  and  of  the  profound  sympathy  that 
they  felt  for  the  tremendous  struggle  with  which  this 
nation  was  engaged.  I  may  say  Abraham  Lincoln 
was  always  to  me,  in  my  youth,  the  type  of  the  repub- 
lican chief,  and  I  looked  upon  him  as  indeed  a  worthy 
successor  of  the  founder  of  the  republic  himself. 

I  should  like  to  recall  a  few  remarks  that  I  made 
in  a  little  volume  which,  I  dare  say,  very  few  people 
ever  read,  and  of  which  I  don't  suppose  there  is  a 
single  copy  in  existence,  except  the  one  in  my  posses- 
sion. If  I  venture  to  inflict  upon  you  a  few  com- 
ments of  mine,  it  is  only  for  this  purpose,  to  convince 
you  that  during  that  great  struggle,  which  is  now  very 
nearly  forty  years  ago,  there  were  many  of  us  who 
followed  every  incident  of  that  immense  crisis  with  all 
the  feelings  that  animated  you  whom  I  see  before  me, 
or  perhaps,  as  most  of  you  have  evidently  the  advan- 
tage of  me  in  years,  which  animated  your  fathers  and 
the  previous  generation.  I  don't  know  how  many  of 
you  actually  took  part  in  that  heroic  struggle,  but  to 
us  it  came  home  precisely  as  if  we  were  engaged  in  it 
from  day  to  day  ourselves.  And  the  end  of  the  Presi- 
dent in  that  great  crisis  was  to  us  as  deeply  affecting 
as  it  was  to  any  one  of  you  or  to  your  fathers. 

It  is  now  nearly  forty  years  ago  since  I  published 
in  England  the  following  remarks  :  — 

"  .  .  .  The  great  struggle  which  has  for  ever  decided  the 
cause  of  slavery  of  man  to  man,  is,  beyond  all  question,  the 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  35 

most  critical  which  the  world  has  seen  since  the  great  revolu- 
tionary outburst.  If  ever  there  was  a  question  which  was  to 
test  political  capacity  and  honesty  it  was  this.  A  true  states- 
man, here  if  ever,  was  bound  to  forecast  truly  the  issue,  and  to 
judge  faithfully  the  cause  at  stake.  We  know  now,  it  is 
beyond  dispute,  that  the  cause  which  won  was  certain  to  win 
in  the  end,  that  its  reserve  force  was  absolutely  without  limit, 
that  its  triumph  was  one  of  the  turning-points  in  modern  civ- 
ilisation. It  was  morally  certain  to  succeed,  and  it  did  suc- 
ceed with  an  overwhelming  and  mighty  success.  From  first 
to  last  both  might  and  right  went  all  one  way.  The  people 
of  England  went  wholly  that  way.  The  official  classes  went 
wholly  some  other  way. 

"  One  of  the  great  key-notes  of  England's  future  is  simply 
this  —  what  will  be  her  relations  with  that  great  republic  ? 
If  the  two  branches  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  are  to  form  two 
phases  of  one  political  movement,  their  welfare  and  that  of  the 
world  will  be  signally  promoted.  If  their  courses  are  marred 
by  jealousies  or  contests,  both  will  be  fatally  retarded.  Real 
confidence  and  sympathy  extended  to  that  people  in  the  hour 
of  their  trial  would  have  forged  an  eternal  bond  between  us. 
To  discredit  and  distrust  them,  then,  was  to  sow  deep  the 
seeds  of  antipathy.  Yet,  although  a  union  in  feeling  was  of 
importance  so  great,  although  so  little  would  have  secured  it, 
the  governing  classes  of  England  wantonly  did  all  they  could 
to  foment  a  breach. 

"  A  great  political  judgment  fell  upon  a  race  of  men,  our 
own  brothers  ;  the  inveterate  social  malady  they  inherited  came 
to  a  crisis.  We  watched  it  gather  with  exultation  and  insult. 
There  fell  on  them  the  most  terrible  necessity  which  can  befall 
men,  the  necessity  of  sacrificing  the  flower  of  their  citizens  in 
civil  war,  of  tearing  up  their  civil  and  social  system  by  the 


36  ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 

roots,  of  transforming  the  most  peaceful  type  of  society  into 
the  most  military.  We  magnified  and  shouted  over  every 
disaster;  we  covered  them  with  insult;  we  filled  the  world 
with  ominous  forebodings  and  unjust  accusations.  There 
came  on  them  one  awful  hour  when  the  powers  of  evil  seemed 
almost  too  strong ;  when  any  but  a  most  heroic  race  would 
have  sunk  under  the  blows  of  their  traitorous  kindred.  We 
chose  that  moment  to  give  actual  succour  to  their  enemy,  and 
stabbed  them  in  the  back  with  a  wound  which  stung  their 
pride  even  more  than  it  crippled  their  strength.  They  dis- 
played the  most  splendid  examples  of  energy  and  fortitude 
which  the  modern  world  has  seen,  with  which  the  defence  of 
Greece  against  Asia,  and  of  France  against  Europe,  alone  can 
be  compared  in  the  whole  annals  of  mankind.  They  devel- 
oped almost  ideal  civic  virtues  and  gifts;  generosity,  faith, 
firmness ;  sympathy  the  most  affecting,  resources  the  most 
exhaustless,  ingenuity  the  most  magical.  They  brought  forth 
the  most  beautiful  and  heroic  character  who  in  recent  times 
has  ever  led  a  nation,  the  only  blameless  type  of  the  statesman 
since  the  days  of  Washington.  Under  him  they  created  the 
purest  model  of  government  which  has  yet  been  seen  on  the 
earth  —  a  whole  nation  throbbing  into  one  great  heart  and 
brain,  one  great  heart  and  brain  giving  unity  and  life  to  a 
whole  nation.  The  hour  of  their  success  came;  unchequered 
in  the  completeness  of  its  triumph,  unsullied  by  any  act  of 
vengeance,  hallowed  by  a  great  martyrdom." 

Mr.  President,  I  have  only  ventured  to  refer  to 
those  words  of  mine  in  order  that  I  may  assure  you 
and  the  members  of  this  Club  that  I  have  been  deeply 
interested  in  the  fortunes  of  the  great  American  repub- 
lic ever  since  I  was  a  youth  fresh  from  school  and  col- 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


37 


lege.  I  have  felt  throughout  the  whole  of  my  life  the 
same  sympathy  with  the  destinies  of  this  great  nation, 
and  I  shall  carry  back  to  my  own  people  the  assurance 
of  the  friendliness  and  kindness  with  which  they  always 
receive  an  English  guest,  and  also  the  sense  that  in  all 
things  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual  the  two  peoples 
are  indissolubly  united  in  thought  and  in  idea,  whilst 
in  things  practical  and  in  the  political  sphere  they  hope 
to  preserve  for  ever  a  thoroughly  good  understanding 
and  a  common  fellowship,  working  their  own  national 
conceptions  out  in  independent  lines. 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING   ALFRED 

d.  901 


The  Millenary  of  King  Alfred  (d.  901) 

ADDRESS  AT  JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY,   BALTIMORE 

WITHIN  a  few  months,  in  the  present  year,  the 
various  peoples  in  both  hemispheres  and  on  either 
side  of  the  Equator  who  speak  our  English  tongue, 
will  unite  in  commemorating  the  thousandth  anniver- 
sary of  the  death  of  King  Alfred  —  the  purest,  noblest, 
most  venerable  hero  of  which  their  race  can  boast. 
There  are  few  other  names  in  the  records  of  human 
civilisation,  the  memory  of  which  has  been  so  per- 
manent, so  unbroken,  so  definite,  and  at  the  same  time 
so  certain.  And  there  is  certainly  no  other  character 
in  history  whose  image  remains  to  this  day  perfectly 
heroic,  faultless,  majestic,  and  saintly  in  all  relations  of 
public  or  of  private  life. 

History,  especially  the  remorseless  criticism  of  mod- 
ern scholarship,  has  torn  the  halo  from  many  a  famous 
hero,  and  has  exposed  the  fraud  or  superstition  which 
built  up  so  many  of  our  cherished  legends  and  anec- 
dotes. But  if  it  has  cleared  the  memory  of  Alfred 
from  some  pleasing  and  some  trivial  myths,  which 
were  solemnly  believed  by  our  fathers,  it  has  really 
made  the  historic  Alfred  a  more  heroic  and  impressive 
figure  than  the  legendary  figure  of  our  boyhood.  The 
true  Alfred  is  even  greater  than  the  poetic  Alfred. 

41 


42  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

And  whatever  records  have  "  leaped  to  light,"  as  our 
poet  has  it,  and  whatever  tales  have  been  flung  aside 
in  the  process  of  research,  no  weakness,  no  crime,  no 
error,  no  falsehood,  no  cruelty  have  ever  been  revealed 
in  his  career. 

It  is  true  that  the  scale  of  the  achievements  of  such 
mighty  men  of  old  as  Alexander,  Julius  Caesar,  and 
Charlemagne,  is  immeasurably  greater,  and  their  per- 
manent influence  on  human  history  as  a  whole  has 
been  infinitely  wider,  as  their  tradition  is  older  and 
more  diffused  amongst  the  nations  to-day.  But  their 
influence  is  to  be  traced  in  so  many  undefined  and 
indirect  results  that  it  can  with  difficulty  be  grasped 
in  a  manner  quite  definite,  with  the  same  intensity, 
national  and  racial,  as  that  of  Alfred.  And  undoubt- 
edly no  one  of  these  immortal  founders  of  kingdoms 
and  of  eras,  nor  can  any  other  historic  founder  of  a 
nation,  compare  with  our  Alfred  in  beauty  of  soul  and 
in  variety  of  genius  and  grace. 

We  are  quite  justified  also  in  speaking  of  the  his- 
tory of  Alfred  as  conspicuously  certain  and  clear.  An 
immense  amount  of  controversy  has  been  carried  on 
in  England,  America,  and  Germany  as  to  certain 
details  of  Alfred's  life  —  the  exact  dates  of  his  death 
and  even  of  his  birth  are  disputed,  the  extent  of  his 
learning,  the  age  at  which  he  learned  to  read  and  to 
understand  Latin,  a  variety  of  characteristic  anecdotes, 
and  some  personal  peculiarities  and  feats.  It  is  true 
that  doubts  continue  as  to  the  authenticity  and  gen- 
uineness of  our  principal  authority,  the  Life  by 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  43 

Asser,  which,  at  best,  is  mixed  with  interpolations, 
misconceptions,  and  errors.  And  doubts  exist  as  to 
Alfred's  being  in  any  sense  the  author  of  some  books 
attributed  to  him,  and  as  to  what  degree  he  is  the 
author  of  books  in  which  he  certainly  had  a  hand. 

But  all  these  things  are  more  or  less  superficial  and 
practically  unimportant.  The  date  of  Alfred's  death 
might  be  of  great  significance  if  certain  events  occurred 
at  this  time,  or  if  certain  men  or  movements  ought  or 
ought  not  to  be  treated  as  contemporary  with  him. 
But  inasmuch  as  we  know  almost  nothing  of  any  real 
mark  as  taking  place  in  any  of  the  years  899,  900,  or 
901,  it  becomes  a  mere  arithmetical  or  paleographical 
problem  to  which  of  the  three  we  attribute  the  death. 
Absolutely  nothing  can  turn  on  it,  any  more  than 
whether  he  died  on  the  24th  or  the  26th  of  October. 
Historians  have  long  agreed  that  901  was  the  date  of 
Alfred's  death,  —  how,  where,  and  why  he  died  at 
fifty-two  they  knew  not.  The  whole  controversy  turns 
on  such  questions  as  whether  the  scribe  in  a  manu- 
script of  the  Saxon  Chronicle  put  the  date  901  exactly 
in  the  right  line  of  his  margin,  and  at  what  day  of 
what  month  the  West  Saxons  at  that  time  ordinarily 
counted  the  commencement  of  the  year.  After  study- 
ing a  great  deal  of  warm  controversy  on  the  subject, 
I  incline  to  the  view  that  the  year  900  is  the  more 
likely  to  be  correct.  But  the  matter  is  to  me  too 
much  like  the  solution  of  a  chess  problem ;  and  I 
rather  regret  to  see  so  much  ingenuity  exhausted  on 
the  point.  It  would  be  far  more  to  the  purpose  if 


44  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

r 

they  could  tell  us  whether  Alfred  was  six  feet  high, 
or  if  his  eyes  were  blue  or  dark.  None  of  these 
things  have  we  any  means  of  knowing ;  and  it  is  a 
pity  to  draw  off  the  attention  of  the  public  from  the 
grand  and  certain  facts  of  Alfred's  career.  Since  the 
Christian  world  continues  to  commemorate  the  birth 
of  Christ  at  a  date  which  has  long  been  known  to 
be  historically  inaccurate,  the  Commemoration  Com- 
mittee wisely  resolved  to  adhere  to  the  recognised  and 
popular  date. 

I  confess  that  I  feel  little  interest  in  solving  these 
petty  problems  of  detail — all  the  more  that  I  very 
much  doubt  if  they  ever  can  be  finally  settled.  For 
myself,  after  no  little  reading  and  hesitation,  I  incline 
to  believe  that  the  Life  of  Asser  is  substantially 
genuine,  and  is  accurate  in  the  main ;  though  it  is 
certainly  corrupt,  defaced  by  palpable  forgeries,  and 
some  original  errors.  I  incline  to  believe  that  the 
pretty  story  of  the  boy  Alfred  learning  to  read  has 
foundation  in  fact,  though  the  circumstances  and  his 
own  age  at  the  time  present  hopeless  inconsistencies 
and  confusion.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  legend 
about  the  cakes  may  have  had  some  basis  of  truth, 
but  we  can  say  no  more.  It  may  have  come  from  a 
popular  ballad,  as  probably  came  the  story  of  the 
harper  in  the  Danes'  camp.  The  story  of  S.  Neot, 
and  the  school  at  Oxford,  are  known  to  be  pure 
inventions  of  later  ages.  The  name  of  the  King  has 
certainly  been  given  to  some  books  which  he  did  not 
write.  And  some  of  his  deeds  are  demonstrably  im- 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  45 

possible ;  and  others  which  are  possible,  seem  to  have 
been  unknown  to  his  own  age. 

But,  when  all  deductions  are  made  and  all  doubtful 
tales  are  rejected,  enough  remains  to  give  us  a  com- 
plete picture  of  the  man  himself  and  unimpeachable 
evidence  of  his  essential  achievements.  There  is  the 
record  of  the  Chronicle  during  Alfred's  life,  as  trust- 
worthy as  the  commentaries  of  Caesar  and  probably 
dictated  by  the  King  himself.  There  is  the  general 
picture  of  character  to  be  extracted  from  Asser,  his 
friend  and  companion.  We  have  undoubted  writings 
by  Alfred  himself —  the  Pastoral  Care  with  its  preface, 
the  Orosius  with  its  insertions,  and  above  all  the 
Boetbius  with  its  abundant  original  matter  —  so  largely 
an  autobiography  or  the  personal  meditations  of  the 
King  himself.  Lastly,  we  have  the  immense  body  of 
Saxon  and  English  annals  and  poems  testifying  to  a 
persistent  tradition,  if  not  to  positive  facts.  Out 
of  all  these  sources  we  get  a  perfectly  definite  and 
thoroughly  consistent  picture  of  a  nature  of  singular 
beauty  and  power ;  of  a  career  as  warrior,  statesman, 
churchman,  and  lawgiver  of  incalculable  importance 
to  the  existence  and  formation  of  the  nation  he  in- 
spired and  ruled.  The  principal  deeds  of  Alfred  as 
king  are  quite  as  certain  as  those  of  Charlemagne, 
or  William  the  Conqueror,  or  Edward  I.  And  we 
know  the  inner  spirit  of  Alfred  far  better  than  we 
shall  ever  know  theirs. 

This  is  the  age  of  minute  historical  research  and  we 
ought  to  be  on  our  guard  never  to  become  its  dupes 


46  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

or  its  slaves.  Of  course  absolute  truth  and  the  most 
scrupulous  accuracy  of  fact  are  quite  indispensable ; 
and  deliberate  neglect  of  either  must  be  the  final  con- 
demnation of  anyone  found  guilty  thereof.  Every 
historian  must  desire  to  have  over  his  labours  the 
epitaph  that  the  late  Bishop  Creighton  is  said  to  have 
composed  for  himself — "  he  tried  to  write  true  his- 
tory." But  the  extraordinary  zeal  with  which  paleo- 
graphy is  pursued  and  the  infinite  sub-divisions  of 
this  curious  learning  have  caused  historical  problems 
to  be  treated  too  much  in  sectional  and  mechanical 
modes,  which  make  us  too  prone  to  trust  our  general 
judgment  to  mere  technical  experts.  We  have  seen 
the  dangers  of  giving  too  much  weight  in  a  criminal 
trial  to  the  expert  graphologist,  or  professor  of  "  chei- 
romancy," who  is  positive  that  a  line  of  handwriting 
is  the  work  of  one  particular  person,  or  the  expert  in 
painting  who  knows  how  much  of  a  picture  is  genuine 
and  how  much  is  spurious.  A  famous  judge  was 
wont  to  say  that  witnesses  in  a  patent  case  might  be 
divided  into  three  classes  —  (i)  liars,  (2)  d — d  liars, 
and  (3)  "experts  "  —  to  which  someone  added  a  fourth 
class  consisting  of  one  too  famous  professional  witness. 
What  I  mean  is,  that  due  attention  should  be  paid 
to  the  opinion  of  qualified  experts  in  handwriting, 
paleography,  style,  dialect,  and  so  forth,  especially 
when  they  agree,  which  they  rarely  do.  But  many 
other  considerations  have  to  be  taken  into  account,  on 
which  few  "  experts  "  are  at  all  expert.  One  scholar 
says  —  Homer  never  speaks  of  writing.  Ergoy  the 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  47 

Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  were  preserved  solely  by  oral 
tradition.  Then  comes  a  learned  archaeologist  who 
finds  some  marks  which  he  cannot  decipher,  and  which 
he  believes  to  be  much  earlier  than  Homer.  Ergo, 
he  says,  Homer's  poems  were  written  by  the  poet. 
The  bone  of  a  Cave-bear  is  found  with  some  rude 
figures  on  it :  this  proves  man,  they  say,  to  have  been 
an  artist  twenty  thousand  years  ago.  A  copy  of  the 
Saxon  Chronicle  is  said  to  have  the  date  in  its  margin 
the  eighth  of  an  inch  too  high.  Ergo,  Alfred  died  in 
899  and  not  in  901.  I  express  no  opinion  on  any- 
thing of  these  discoveries.  I  am  far  from  undervalu- 
ing them,  and  feel  that  they  merit  close  attention. 
But  I  say  —  Not  too  fast ;  there  are  many  other 
things  to  consider ;  there  are  hardly  ten  men  acces- 
sible whose  opinion  on  these  points  is  conclusive ;  and 
there  are  a  dozen  modes  in  which  the  fact  now  ob- 
served may  be  explained  without  our  accepting  the 
momentous  conclusions  that  are  claimed.  A  mere 
expert,  like  fire,  is  a  good  servant,  but  a  bad  master. 
I  deal  with  these  points  because  some  persons  have 
suggested  as  objection  to  the  Millenary  Commemora- 
tion this  year,  that  it  is  more  probable  that  Alfred 
died  in  899,  or  in  900,  and  not  in  901.  Again  it  has 
been  suggested  that  Alfred  was  born  not  in  849,  as  all 
the  ordinary  histories  tell  us,  but  in  841,  which 
would  make  him  seven  years  older.  This  would 
make  things  easier  all  round.  It  would  be  far  more 
reasonable  if  Ethelwulf  sent  his  son,  then  aged  thir- 
teen, to  Rome,  instead  of  sending  a  child  of  four  on  so 


48  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

long  and  difficult  a  journey.  And  he  might  very 
well  have  won  the  beautiful  book  and  learned  to  read 
at  the  age  of  twelve  with  his  own  mother  Osburga, 
who  might  then  have  been  living.  In  that  case  Alfred 
would  have  been  thirty  when  he  began  to  reign,  in- 
stead of  twenty-two,  and  would  have  been  fifty-eight, 
or  even  fifty-nine,  at  his  death,  which  makes  more 
conceivable  the  enormous  amount  of  his  life's  work. 
But  against  this  stands  the  distinct  statement  of  the 
Chronicle  and  also  of  Asser  in  his  Life,  the  authority 
for  both  of  which  must  have  been  Alfred  himself,  that 
he  began  to  reign  at  the  age  of  twenty-two. 

Now,  I  refer  to  these  points,  still  in  dispute  by  the 
experts,  simply  to  show  that  the  matters  which  are 
doubtful  about  Alfred  are  not  matters  which  affect  our 
estimate  of  Alfred's  character  or  Alfred's  achievements. 
There  are  people  who  will  object  to  anything  and  give 
all  kinds  of  trivial  reasons.  A  very  great  personage, 
who  is  a  statesman  as  well  as  an  historian,  says  that 
Alfred  "is  a  myth."  He  might  as  well  say  St.  Paul 
"  is  a  myth,"  because  he  does  not  believe  in  the  tradi- 
tion of  his  foot  marks  in  the  Mamertine  Prison  in 
Rome  or  of  the  —  Dvmine,  ghto  Vadis  ?  —  in  thefuori 
le  Mura  anecdote.  There  are  many  things  as  to  St. 
Paul,  of  which  we  are  not  certain,  and  some  stories 
which  we  know  to  be  fictions.  And  so,  there  are 
some  things  about  Alfred  of  which  we  are  not  cer- 
tain, and  some  things  which  we  know  to  be  fiction. 
But  St.  Paul  and  Alfred  both  wrote  some  authentic 
and  genuine  pieces  in  which  their  whole  souls  are 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  49 

shown.  Both  had  intimate  companions  who  cer- 
tainly recorded  the  essential  facts  of  their  lives.  And, 
though  we  are  not  quite  certain  in  which  of  three 
years  Alfred  died,  nor  of  what  he  died,  nor  where,  or 
what  was  his  exact  age  at  death,  we  do  know  for  cer- 
tain how  vast  was  the  work  of  his  life  in  the  history  of 
his  country,  and  we  do  know  what  the  real  Alfred  was 
as  hero,  statesman,  and  saint. 

Again,  there  are  people  who  grumble  about  any 
millenary,  and  others  who  sneer  at  the  word  itself. 
Well !  millenary  is  quite  as  natural  and  correct  a  term 
as  centenary  —  and  of  centenaries  we  hear  more  than 
enough.  In  the  nature  of  things,  there  will  be  very 
few  millenaries  possible.  The  mere  fact  that  the 
memory  of  a  great  thinker  or  statesman  keeps  bright 
for  a  thousand  years  is  a  striking  phenomenon  which 
we  ought  to  emphasise  with  all  our  power.  It  is  the 
death  always,  not  the  birth,  we  should  commemorate. 
What  had  happened  in  the  world  when  Alfred  saw 
the  light  ?  It  was  a  time  of  confusion,  trouble,  and 
despair.  What  happened  when  Alfred  died,  was  this. 
The  purest  spirit  that  ever  spoke  our  mother  tongue 
lay  in  its  last  rest.  England  was  saved  from  barbar- 
ism and  from  heathendom.  The  civilisation  of  Eng- 
land began  in  earnest — and  for  a  thousand  years  it 
has  grown  larger  and  grander. 

Let  us  turn  to  the  things  of  which  we  are  certain 
and  wherein  Alfred's  greatness  is  clear  as  the  sun  at 
noon.  He  was  a  mighty  soldier  —  a  hero  —  with 
consummate  genius  for  war.  An  historian  who  has 


5O  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

written  an  excellent  History  of  the  Art  of  War  for  the 
Middle  Ages,  has  treated  Alfred  as  warrior,  and  made 
clear  all  the  essential  points,  though  many  details  of 
his  tactics  still  remain  obscure.  Alfred's  youth  was 
passed  in  the  midst  of  the  death-struggle  of  Saxons 
and  Angles  with  the  Danes  and  Vikings.  For  two 
generations  they  had  been  cutting  England  to  pieces, 
and  whilst  he  was  a  boy,  they  had  begun  to  fix  them- 
selves in  fortified  camps  along  the  coast.  The  Saxons 
had  no  forts,  no  fleet,  no  regular  armies,  and  but  few 
soldiers  wearing  defensive  armour  and  trained  to  war. 
The  Vikings  had  all  these.  They  were  pirates,  adven- 
turers, conquerors,  with  a  genius  for  enterprise  and 
desultory  fighting,  splendid  seamen,  trained  warriors 
of  undaunted  courage  and  resource.  And  they  had 
now  learned  the  use  of  horses,  more  as  mounted 
infantry  than  regular  cavalry.  In  fact  they  were  much 
like  the  Boers  under  de  Wet ;  and  the  Saxons  were 
like  the  British  at  Majuba  or  Stormberg. 

England  and  the  Continent,  what  we  now  call 
France,  Belgium,  and  Holland,  were  equally  at  the 
mercy  of  these  terrible  invaders.  And  the  period  from 
Alfred's  birth  to  his  thirtieth  year  was  the  darkest  time 
of  all  for  Christian  Europe.  The  heirs  of  Charles  the 
Great,  the  heirs  of  our  Egbert,  were  alike  defeated  in 
turn  —  London,  Winchester,  Paris,  and  Tours  were 
sacked  and  destroyed.  Then  York  was  stormed,  the 
Northumbrian  kings  slain  and  their  kingdom  blotted 
out.  Then  the  Mercian  kingdom  was  attacked,  and 
the  East  Anglian  king  slaughtered.  Alfred  was  twenty- 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  5! 

two  when  the  "grand  army"  of  the  Vikings  descended 
upon  Wessex,  seized  Reading,  and  entrenched  them- 
selves along  the  Thames.  They  were  carrying  all 
before  them,  when  Alfred  and  his  brother  Ethelred, 
then  king  of  Wessex,  came  up  with  them  at  Ashdown, 
in  the  "Vale  of  the  White  Horse."  We  have  prime 
accounts  of  the  battle :  how  Alfred  would  not  wait  for 
the  king  who  remained  to  hear  mass,  but  charged  up 
hill  "  as  furious  as  a  wild  boar  "  —  how  the  battle  raged 
till  nightfall  —  how  the  heathen  were  smitten  hip  and 
thigh  —  how  their  king,  five  earls,  and  thousands  of 
pagans  were  slain,  and  the  enemy  routed  and  chased 
for  two  days.  This  grand  victory  is  always  ascribed  to 
Alfred's  personal  valour  and  leadership.  He  was  but 
twenty-two. 

But  this  glorious  victory  did  not  save  Wessex.  In 
a  few  weeks  the  Danes  rallied,  defeated  Ethelred  again 
and  again,  and  finally  killed  him,  when  Alfred  became 
King  at  twenty-two.  He  was  now  in  the  thick  of  war, 
driven  back  from  Berkshire  into  Wiltshire,  with  inces- 
sant battles,  not  unfrequent  victories  in  the  field,  fol- 
lowed by  disastrous  retreats,  as  his  worn  forces  grew 
smaller  and  more  exhausted.  In  that  year,  says  the 
veracious  Chronicle,  dictated  perhaps  by  Alfred  him- 
self, nine  general  battles  were  fought  against  the  army 
south  of  Thames,  besides  frequent  raids,  and  nine 
earls  and  one  king  of  the  Vikings  were  slain. 

But,  after  this  mutual  slaughter,  both  sides  were 
exhausted ;  and  Alfred  obtained  a  truce  for  Wessex 
perhaps  by  a  judicious  subsidy.  It  was  nothing  but  a 


52  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

truce,  as  he  well  knew,  but  it  gave  him  invaluable  time 
to  recruit.  His  eye  of  genius  perceived  that  he  must 
stop  this  endless  flow  from  the  north,  and  deprive  the 
invaders  of  their  command  of  the  sea,  which  had  given 
them  the  advantage  of  mobility.  Alfred  built  galleys 
and  long  ships,  and  brought  in  Danes  and  Norsemen 
from  across  the  Channel  to  teach  his  people  seamanship. 
He  now  began  to  win  naval  victories,  and  protect  his 
own  southern  coasts,  on  which  one  hundred  and  twenty 
galleys  of  the  Vikings  were  wrecked  after  an  engage- 
ment with  Alfred's  formidable  fleet.  But  whilst  the 
King  was  in  the  far  west,  where  he  overcame  the  Danes 
at  Exeter,  a  new  body  from  the  northeast  burst  into 
Wessex  and  planted  themselves  in  Wiltshire.  The 
Saxons  were  panic-stricken,  and  many  fled  over  seas, 
whilst  Alfred,  with  his  body-guard,  took  refuge  in  the 
marshes  of  the  Parret  and  entrenched  himself,  as  in 
early  days  the  Danes  used  to  do,  at  Athelney  in  Som- 
ersetshire. Issuing  from  his  stronghold,  the  King 
massed  the  levies  of  Somerset,  Wilts,  and  Hampshire, 
and  in  the  decisive  battle  of  Eddington  he  overthrew 
the  Danes  with  great  slaughter,  and  drove  them  to 
their  base  at  Chippenham.  Here  they  were  besieged 
and  surrendered  at  discretion.  Guthrum  and  thirty 
of  his  chiefs  consented  to  be  baptized.  He  took  the 
name  of  Athelstan  :  they  swore  fealty  to  Alfred,  and 
consented  to  withdraw  to  East  Anglia  and  settle  down 
in  Norfolk  and  Suffolk.  This  Treaty  of  Wedmore  in 
878  was  the  foundation  of  Alfred's  new  settlement  of 
England.  It  was  a  momentous  date:  the  civilisation, 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  53 

compound  races,  unity,  and  peace  of  our  island  all  take 
their  origin  from  this  settlement,  which  was  as  states- 
manlike in  conception  as  it  was  magnanimous  in  spirit. 

Alfred  was  now  twenty-nine,  and  he  had  been  King 
just  seven  years.  He  was  already  the  darling  of  his 
people  and  the  founder  of  our  nation.  He  had  now 
learned  all  the  tactics  of  the  Vikings,  and  he  could  beat 
them  at  their  own  manoeuvres.  He  now  possessed 
sea  power,  and  could  meet  them  before  they  reached 
our  shores  ;  and  he  used  the  years  of  peace  to  organise 
a  navy  far  superior  to  theirs.  Resisting  the  strong 
temptation  to  exterminate  the  heathen  invaders  whom 
he  had  beaten  in  a  dozen  fights,  he  induced  them  to 
make  peace  on  advantageous  terms,  to  become  Chris- 
tian, to  settle  down  on  the  land  and  take  to  fixed  and 
civilised  life  instead  of  piracy  and  war,  and  he  con- 
sented to  their  retaining  the  east  and  east  centre  of  the 
kingdom  north  of  Thames,  out  of  which,  indeed,  they 
had  driven  Mercians  and  Anglians.  Guthrum's  East 
Anglia  became  a  Christian  "  buffer-state  "  between  the 
Vikings  and  Wessex  ;  and  it  has  proved  the  nucleus 
of  one  of  the  stoutest  and  most  important  races  in  the 
complex  history  of  Great  Britain. 

Alfred  now  set  to  work  with  all  the  energy  of  his 
soul,  and  the  insight  of  consummate  genius  to  take 
care  that  the  new  and  settled  Danish  race  should  not 
be  disturbed  or  perverted  by  fresh  heathen  invaders. 
He  laboured  to  develop  his  fleet,  taking  command  of 
his  ships  in  person,  and  he  devised  a  new  type  of 
cruiser,  — "  long  ships  nigh  twice  as  long  as  those 


54  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

of  the  Danes,  with  sixty  oars  or  more,  steadier  and 
swifter,  as  well  as  higher  out  of  the  water,  on  a  design 
of  his  own,  quite  unlike  that  of  Frisians  or  Danes."  In 
one  summer  with  his  new  warships  he  destroyed  more 
than  twenty  Viking  ships  along  the  southern  coast. 

But  he  saw  the  need  for  fortresses  on  land  as  well 
as  for  a  navy  at  sea.  He  built  a  system  of  strong 
places,  fencing  in  the  towns  and  raising  stockades  at 
spots  in  the  country.  He  rebuilt  London  by  restor- 
ing the  old  Roman  walls  and  filling  it  with  a  new 
colony  of  warlike  settlers.  It  thus  formed  a  post 
north  of  Thames  which  commanded  the  approach  to 
Essex  and  East  Anglia,  as  Calais  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury commanded  the  entrance  into  France.  Alfred  had 
many  wars  in  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  reign,  but 
their  whole  character  and  strategy  is  altered.  The 
invaders  are  continually  stopped  and  dispersed  at  sea; 
they  never  capture  any  important  town ;  they  are 
never  able  to  post  themselves  firmly  and  occupy  a 
district.  They  are  in  the  true  sense  (not  in  the 
British  official  sense)  "  marauders " ;  and  they  are 
driven  backwards  and  forwards  from  Thames  to  the 
Exe,  from  Chester  to  Essex  before  the  eagle  swoop 
of  the  unwearied  and  invincible  King.  Alfred's  most 
brilliant  campaign,  fought  all  across  England,  is  diffi- 
cult indeed  to  explain,  by  reason  of  its  rapid  changes 
and  great  area.  It  was  that  which  ended  in  896,  in 
the  forty-seventh  year  of  his  life  and  the  twenty-fifth 
of  his  reign. 

Along  with  his  system  of  fortifications,  Alfred  re- 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  55 

organised  the  militia  of  the  kingdom,  dividing  it  into 
a  stationary  or  garrison  part,  and  a  mobilised  and  cam- 
paigning part.  It  was  a  rude  anticipation  of  the  feu- 
dal system  of  defensive  war.  At  his  accession  the 
gallant  Saxons  had  been  a  mere  crowd  of  half-armed 
countrymen.  In  ten  or  fifteen  years  of  war  and  of 
military  organisation,  Alfred  had  created  the  nucleus 
of  a  regular  army,  with  adequate  fortified  bases,  and 
something  like  a  knighthood  or  chivalry,  a  rudimen- 
tary feudal  militia.  With  this,  in  the  later  part  of  his 
reign,  his  campaigns  are  a  series  of  decisive  blows, 
his  battles  are  crushing  defeats  of  the  enemy,  and  his 
command  of  the  field  is  triumphant  at  every  point. 
One  of  his  most  brilliant  feats  was  capturing  without 
ships  a  Danish  fleet  which  had  pushed  up  the  river 
Lea.  He  barred  the  river,  defended  its  banks  with 
stockades,  and  forced  the  Vikings  to  escape  by  land, 
leaving  behind  them  their  shir-3.  Since  the  capture 
of  British  ships  by  French  cavalry  on  the  ice  in  the 
great  war,  there  has  seldom  been  so  singular  an 
exploit.  In  fact  during  the  later  life  of  the  King  the 
Norsemen  hardly  ventured  to  trouble  our  island. 
They  turned  aside  to  Flanders,  Normandy,  and  the 
coasts  of  the  Continent. 


"  For  the  last  four  years  of  his  life,"  says  Professor  Oman, 
"  Alfred  was  undisturbed  save  by  trifling  raids  of  small 
squadrons,  which  he  brushed  off  with  ease  by  means  of  the 
new  fleet  of  '  great  ships  '  which  he  had  built.  The  work  of 
defence  was  done  :  Wessex  was  saved,  and  with  Wessex  the 


56  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

English  nationality.  In  a  few  years  the  King's  gallant  son, 
Edward  the  Elder,  was  to  take  the  offensive  against  the  old 
enemy,  and  to  repay  on  the  Danelagh  all  the  evils  that 
England  had  suffered  during  the  miserable  years  of  the  ninth 
century.  That  such  triumphs  lay  within  his  power  was 
absolutely  and  entirely  the  work  of  his  great  father,  who  had 
turned  defeat  into  victory,  brought  order  out  of  chaos,  and  left 
the  torn  and  riven  kingdom  that  he  had  inherited  transformed 
into  the  best  organised  and  most  powerful  state  in  Western 
Europe." 

Is  Alfred  "  a  myth  "  now,  I  ask.  It  is  true  that 
some  of  the  details  of  these  campaigns  are  doubtful ; 
not  a  few  are  obscure  to  explain.  But  the  whole  of 
the  points  which  I  have  briefly  summarised  are  cer- 
tain and  clear.  They  may  dispute  which  Merton  is 
meant,  what  Eddington  now  is,  and  why  Alfred  was 
beaten  so  soon  after  the  battle  of  Ashdown.  But  all 
these  things  are  unimportant.  The  essential  facts  are 
plain ;  they  are  certain.  And  they  are  enough  to 
raise  Alfred  as  warrior  to  the  same  level  as  Henry  V, 
or  Cromwell,  or  Marlborough,  —  aye,  almost  as  sea- 
man to  the  level  of  Blake  and  Nelson,  for  he  grasped 
the  idea  of  sea  power  and  realised  its  decisive  effects. 
And  they  raise  him  as  statesman  and  founder  of 
nations  to  the  level  of  the  Conqueror,  and  Edward  I, 
or  the  Protector.  They  recast  our  nation.  Alfred 
was  its  original  creator. 

Turn  to  his  achievements  as  king.  When  he  came 
to  the  throne  at  twenty-two,  having  seen  the  death  of 
his  father  and  his  three  brothers  within  thirteen  years, 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  57 

it  was  the  darkest  hour  of  the  West  Saxons.  North- 
umbria,  Mercia,  East  Anglia,  and  parts  of  Wessex 
had  been  desolated ;  the  abbeys  sacked ;  schools, 
churches,  homesteads  in  ruins.  Northern,  Central,  and 
Eastern  England  was  in  possession  of  the  Danes,  and 
Wessex  lay  at  their  mercy ;  "  the  people  submitted 
to  them,  save  King  Alfred,  —  he  with  a  little  band 
withdrew  into  the  woods  and  swamps."  It  was  the 
gravest  crisis  to  which  England  ever  was  exposed,  for 
conquest  by  the  ferocious  pagans  would  have  meant 
the  postponement  of  British  civilisation  for  ages. 
Once  established  in  our  island,  the  Danes  would  have 
been  the  scourge  of  Northern  Europe.  From  this 
supreme  disaster  Alfred  —  and  he  alone  —  saved 
England,  preserved  Europe. 

No  sooner  had  he  settled  Guthrum  and  his  host  at 
East  Anglia,  which  secured  the  incorporation  of  a 
Norseman  race  with  the  Saxon  and  with  England, 
than  Alfred  set  to  work  to  restore  his  desolated  land. 
His  treasury  was  empty,  his  towns  were  in  ruins,  civil 
government  was  paralysed.  He  built  churches,  ab- 
beys, schools ;  he  repeopled  waste  districts.  He  re- 
organised justice,  making  the  judges  the  ministers  of 
the  sovereign,  and  subject  to  his  final  appeal.  As 
legislator  he  recast  and  fused  the  Saxon,  Anglian,  and 
Kentish  laws  or  "  dooms,"  so  that  unity  of  civil  law 
stimulated  the  fusion  of  central,  eastern,  and  southern 
Anglo-Saxons.  His  system  of  laws,  of  which  we  have 
authentic  records,  which  a  learned  German,  Dr.  Lieber- 
mann,  has  now  edited  with  scholarly  precision,  is  a 


58  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

model  of  wise,  cautious,  and  broad  legal  reform.  He 
is  full  of  anxiety  not  to  make  abrupt  innovation,  to 
impose  nothing  strange  or  unwelcome,  and  to  enact 
no  command  which  could  not  be  maintained  by  public 
opinion. 

The  restoration  of  London  was  a  stroke  of  profound 
statecraft.  By  it  he  blocked  the  raids  of  the  Norse- 
men up  the  Thames,  by  which  they  had  been  wont  to 
penetrate  into  Surrey,  Middlesex,  and  Berkshire.  By 
it  he  obtained  an  impregnable  fortress,  north  of  Thames, 
by  which  he  could  control  East  Anglia.  How  little 
could  he  foresee  what  London  was  to  become  a  thou- 
sand years  after  his  time.  Perhaps  he  might  have 
doubted  if  he  was  wise,  could  he  now  return  to  earth 
to  see  all  that  this  huge  agglomeration  of  buildings 
has  become.  But  the  restoration  of  the  ancient  city, 
which  the  Roman  historian  describes  as  "  especially 
famous  for  the  crowd  of  its  merchants  and  their 
wares"  —  the  city  which  in  Alfred's  day  counted 
nearly  a  thousand  years  of  continuous  life,  but  which 
had  lain  desolate  for  thirty-five  years  since  its  destruc- 
tion by  the  Norsemen  about  the  time  of  Alfred's 
birth  —  the  city  which  now  counts  nearly  two  thou- 
sand years  of  existence,  and  is  now  the  vastest  accumu- 
lation of  men  that  has  ever  been  recorded  in  authentic 
history  —  the  restoration  of  London,  I  say,  destined 
to  be  the  barrier  of  the  Danes  and  the  gateway  into 
Mercia,  and  finally  the  emporium  of  the  world,  was 
the  master-stroke  of  a  great  far-seeing  genius. 

He   showed  himself  in  the  rest  of  his  policy  the 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  59 

same  far-sighted  and  organising  creator  of  a  new 
nation.  The  Christianised  Danes  of  East  Anglia 
soon  learned  to  look  with  admiration  and  awe  on  his 
power.  Alfred  in  the  second  half  of  his  reign  ruled 
over  a  compact  state  reaching  from  the  Channel  up 
into  Southwestern  England  as  far  as  Lancashire, 
with  fortresses  along  the  Thames,  along  the  rivers  of 
the  west,  and  up  to  Chester  on  the  north.  English 
Mercia  which  he  created  and  which  was  so  admirably 
ruled  by  his  able  daughter  Ethelfleda  and  her  hus- 
band, Ethelred,  formed  a  new  buffer-state  between 
the  Danes  of  the  Danelagh  in  East  Anglia  and  the 
Britons  of  Cornwall  and  Wales.  Alfred  made  no 
attempt  formally  to  annex  either  Cornwall,  or  Wales, 
or  East  Anglia,  or  Northumbria.  But  his  paramount 
influence  over  all  was  felt,  and  they  recognised  the 
supreme  influence  of  the  organic,  civilised,  progressive 
kingdom  of  Wessex.  Alfred  created  for  his  descend- 
ants a  united  England  not  by  conquest,  not  by  fraud 
—  but  by  wisdom,  justice,  and  moral  greatness. 

But  the  genius  and  serene  humanity  of  Alfred  was 
not  content  with  our  little  island.  He  was  European, 
Catholic,  imperial,  in  the  highest  and  purest  meaning 
of  these  words.  In  truth,  he  recognised  that  the 
petty  island  of  which  he  was  the  predominant  chief 
needed  to  be  sustained  and  vivified  by  the  larger  and 
more  ancient  culture  of  Southern  Europe  and  even  of 
the  East.  He  who  had  been  a  boy  at  Rome,  hallowed 
by  the  hand  of  the  great  Pope  Leo  IV,  he  who  had 
crossed  Europe  twice,  and  had  been  at  the  Court  of 


6O  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

the  Frank  king,  the  great  grand-daughter  of  Charle- 
magne becoming  his  step-mother,  used  every  means 
to  connect  our  island  with  the  culture  of  the  Continent. 
He  brought  over  learned  men  from  France  and  Ger- 
many ;  he  sent  constant  missions  and  tribute  to  Rome ; 
he  sent  bold  navigators  to  the  North  Cape  and  the 
Baltic ;  he  was  in  communication  with  the  Patriarch 
of  Jerusalem,  and  the  better  opinion  is  that  he  sent  a 
mission  to  the  Christian  churches  in  India.  East  and 
West  were  filled  with  a  profound  impression  of  the 
lofty  and  religious  enthusiasm  of  the  West-Saxon  king 
—  the  new  Charlemagne  of  Britain  who  dreamed  of  an 
intellectual  commerce  between  the  ancient  world  and 
the  new  world,  between  the  East  and  the  West.  This 
was  to  be  a  true  imperialist  —  to  found  a  world-wide 
empire  of  sympathy,  knowledge,  and  ideas  —  not  one 
of  bloodshed,  domination,  and  ruin. 

Alfred's  energy  and  culture  seem  to  have  been 
of  that  general  and  encyclopaedic  kind  which  marks 
only  the  greatest  and  rarest  of  mankind.  War,  hunt- 
ing, poetry,  music,  literature,  architecture,  mechanics, 
geography,  law,  prayer,  and  ceremonial  seem  alike  to 
have  employed  his  interests.  He  built  churches, 
courts,  schools,  monasteries  for  men  and  for  women  ; 
he  designed  ships,  lamps  to  read  by,  and  machines  to 
record  the  time.  Only  the  other  day  at  Oxford  I  had 
in  my  hand  the  very  copy  of  the  Pastoral  Care  which 
he  sent  to  Worcester  Cathedral,  for  he  tells  us  he  had 
one  sent  to  each  diocese  in  his  kingdom ;  and  I 
handled  that  curious  and  perfect  remnant  of  his  per- 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  6 1 

sonal  effects  —  the  Jewel,  which,  with  enamel  work 
and  delicate  gold  filigree,  bears  the  inscription  —  Al- 
fred bad  me  worked.  The  precise  form  of  his  build- 
ings we  know  not.  It  is  doubtful  if  a  single  stone  of 
his  actual  construction  remains,  at  least  not  any  that 
is  visible  to-day.  But  the  traditions,  anecdotes,  and 
things  ascribed  to  the  King,  even  if  we  can  trust  few 
particulars  of  them,  exactly  testify  to  the  general  belief 
in  his  extraordinary  range  of  interest.  Alfred  lived  in 
an  age  of  very  few  books,  of  most  meagre  learning 
and  of  rudimentary  simplicity  of  life  —  an  age  when 
a  man  of  consummate  genius  and  of  inexhaustible 
energy  could  master  almost  everything  of  value  that 
was  to  be  known,  and  almost  everything  essential  that 
had  to  be  made  or  done.  I  doubt  if  recorded  history 
tells  of  any  men  who  in  range  of  interest  and  variety 
of  power  were  quite  the  equals  of  Alfred,  unless  it  be 
Alexander,  Julius  Caesar,  and  Charles  the  Great,  and 
perhaps  Bonaparte.  And  if  Julius,  Alexander,  and 
Bonaparte  greatly  surpassed  Alfred  in  scientific  ac- 
quirements, they  were  immeasurably  inferior  to  him 
in  grace  of  nature  and  beauty  of  soul.  And  if  the 
mighty  Charles  towered  above  Alfred  in  force  and  in 
breadth  of  space,  he  could  not  compare  with  the  West- 
Saxon  saint  in  exquisite  purity  or  in  spiritual  eleva- 
tion. Alfred,  it  is  truly  said,  was  the  only  perfect 
man  of  action  in  the  annals  of  mankind. 

It  is  in  his  own  writings  that  we  know  the  true 
Alfred  best.  Julius  and  Bonaparte  have  left  us  memoirs 
of  themselves  more  ample  than  Alfred's ;  but  neither 


62  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

of  them  open  to  us  their  own  souls  with  such  candour 
and  truth.  The  authentic  writings  of  our  King  are 
ample  to  shew  us  how  he  looked  on  the  world,  on  his 
duty,  on  his  aspirations,  and  on  his  Creator.  No  man 
has  left  us  his  thoughts  with  such  entire  openness  of 
heart,  if  it  be  not  St.  Paul,  St.  Augustine,  St.  Bernard, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  or  King  David.  The  so-called 
Boethius  of  Alfred,  one  third  of  which  are  his  own 
original  meditations,  is  as  beautiful  in  expression  as 
it  is  noble  in  thought.  It  is  certain  that  these  are  the 
genuine  words  of  the  royal  saint.  And  neither  ancient 
moralist  nor  scriptural  homily  has  ever  exceeded  them 
in  dignity  and  elevation.  Listen  to  these  words  :  — 

"  Power  is  never  a  good  thing  save  its  possessor  be  good  ; 
for  when  power  is  beneficent,  this  is  due  to  the  man  who 
wields  it.  Therefore  it  is  that  a  man  never  by  his  authority 
attains  to  virtue  and  excellence,  but  by  reason  of  his  virtue 
and  excellence  he  attains  to  authority  and  power.  No  man 
is  better  for  his  power,  but  for  his  skill  he  is  good,  if  he  is 
good,  and  for  his  skill  he  is  worthy  of  power,  if  he  is  worthy 
of  it.  Study  Wisdom  then,  and  when  ye  have  learned  it, 
contemn  it  not,  for  I  tell  you  that  by  its  means  ye  may  with- 
out fail  attain  to  power,  yea,  even  though  not  desiring  it. 
Ye  need  not  take  thought  for  power  nor  endeavour  after  it ; 
for  if  ye  are  only  wise  and  good,  it  will  follow  you,  even 
though  ye  seek  it  not.  Tell  me  now,  O  Mind,  what  is  the 
height  of  thy  desire  in  wealth  and  power  ?  Is  it  not  this 
present  life  and  the  perishable  wealth  that  we  before  spoke 
of?  O  ye  foolish  men,  do  ye  know  what  riches  are,  and 
power,  and  worldly  weal  ?  They  are  your  lords  and  rulers, 
not  ye  theirs." 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  63 

This  is  how  the  King  understands  his  own  royal  office. 
He  says :  — 

"  O  Philosophy,  thou  knowest  that  I  never  greatly  delighted 
in  the  possession  of  earthly  power,  nor  longed  for  this  author- 
ity, but  I  desired  instruments  and  materials  to  carry  out  the 
work  I  was  set  to  do,  which  was  that  I  should  virtuously  and 
fittingly  administer  the  authority  committed  to  me.  Now,  no 
man,  as  thou  knowest,  can  get  full  play  for  his  natural  gifts, 
nor  conduct  and  administer  government,  unless  he  hath  fit 
tools,  and  the  raw  material  to  work  upon.  By  material  I 
mean  that  which  is  necessary  to  the  exercise  of  natural 
powers ;  thus  a  king's  raw  material  and  instruments  of  rule 
are  a  well-peopled  land,  and  he  must  have  men  of  prayer, 
men  of  war,  and  men  of  work.  As  thou  knowest,  without 
these  tools  no  king  may  display  his  special  talent.  ...  I 
have  desired  material  for  the  exercise  of  government  that  my 
talents  and  my  power  might  not  be  forgotten,  for  every  good 
gift  and  every  power  soon  groweth  old  and  is  no  more  heard 
of,  if  Wisdom  be  not  in  them.  Without  Wisdom  no  faculty 
can  be  fully  brought  out,  for  whatsoever  is  done  unwisely  can 
never  be  accounted  as  skill.  To  sum  up  all,  I  may  say  that 
it  has  ever  been  my  desire  to  live  honourably  while  I  was 
alive,  and  after  my  death  to  leave  to  them  that  should  come 
after  me  my  memory  in  good  works." 

That  memory  in  good  works  of  the  Saxon  hero  has 
now  lasted  a  thousand  years  after  his  death ;  and  is 
more  definite,  more  inspiring,  more  sacred  to  us  to-day 
than  it  has  ever  been  in  the  ten  centuries  through 
which  it  has  survived.  Shall  we,  the  hundred  millions 
on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  who  speak  the  tongue 


64  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

that  Alfred  spoke,  who  are  of  the  same  blood  and 
kindred,  suffer  to  fade  away  the  memory  of  one  who 
was  the  noblest  type  of  our  race  and  traditions.  In 
this  age  of  Progress  and  of  never-ending  pursuit  of 
new  things,  new  men,  new  ideas,  we  feel  ever  more 
and  more  in  the  bottom  of  our  minds,  the  need  to 
base  these  on  just  traditions  of  the  Past.  Ours  is  the 
age  of  Progress;  but  it  is  also  the  age  of  History, 
and  of  due  commemoration  of  all  that  in  the  Past 
has  been  surest,  purest,  and  best.  Ours  is  an  age  of 
Hero-worship  in  the  true  and  wise  sense  of  the  term, 
the  reverent  honour  of  our  real  teachers,  founders,  and 
chiefs.  To  a  nation  the  quality  of  its  Ideals  are  every- 
thing—  the  Ideals  are  more  vital  to  a  people  than 
they  are  to  a  man ;  for  he  has  personal  and  individual 
models  before  him  from  his  youth.  By  Ideals  I  mean 
that  which  a  people  admires  and  seeks  to  imitate,  to 
reproduce,  to  follow. 

The  intellectual,  spiritual,  scientific  heroes  of  our 
nation  and  race  receive,  as  it  is,  abundant  honour  and 
consideration.  The  Shakespeares  and  Miltons,  the 
Newtons  and  the  Darwins,  the  Gregorys  and  the  Ber- 
nards are  amply  remembered.  But  the  kings,  warriors, 
and  statesmen  too  often  bring  divisions  of  nation, 
creed,  and  school  of  opinion.  The  Richelieus  and 
the  Cromwells,  the  Fredericks  and  the  Bonapartes, 
even  the  Turgots  and  the  Washingtons  have  left  some 
memories  of  strife  and  defeat  behind  them.  There  is 
hardly  in  all  modern  history  a  name  which  does  not 
rouse  some  embers  of  passion  in  one  or  other  quarter 


THE    MILLENARY   OF    KING    ALFRED  65 

of  those  who  suffered  at  the  hand  of  the  soldier  or 
the  ruler.  The  name  of  Alfred  can  awaken  no  mem- 
ory but  one  of  gratitude  and  affection.  It  is  bound 
up  with  no  struggle  of  Protestant  against  Catholic,  or 
of  Celt  against  Saxon,  of  people  against  king,  of 
reformer  against  reactionist,  of  rich  against  poor, 
of  weak  against  the  strong.  His  memory  is  one 
record  of  unsullied  beneficence,  of  piety  without  super- 
stition, of  valour  without  cruelty,  of  government  with- 
out oppression. 

Without  hyperbole,  without  boasting,  we  may  say 
that  it  is  the  most  ancient,  the  most  continuous,  the 
most  definite  memory  in  all  Christian  history.  If 
that  of  the  Catholic  church  and  of  its  founders  and 
chiefs  is  more  ancient  and  also  more  extended,  it  is 
the  memory  of  an  institution  and  its  influence  and 
effects  are  less  locally  defined.  If  the  memory  of 
Charlemagne  is  grander  and  more  diffused,  the  se- 
quence of  his  authority  is  more  broken  and  dispersed. 
But  the  unbroken  effect  of  Alfred's  life  and  work  can 
be  traced  with  precision  over  a  thousand  years,  and 
for  another  thousand  years,  we  may  predict,  it  will 
continue  to  flourish  and  enlarge. 

How  vast  is  this  antiquity  of  tradition  compared 
with  anything  in  modern  history.  It  is  but  two  years 
ago  that  the  great  Republic  of  the  West  celebrated 
the  first  centenary  of  their  immortal  founder's  death  — 
George  Washington.  The  French  Republic  celebrated 
its  first  centenary  just  twelve  years  ago.  The  king- 
dom of  Italy  is  forty  years  old.  The  German  Empire 


66  THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED 

is  thirty  years  old ;  and  it  has  just  been  celebrating 
the  second  centenary  of  the  kingdom  of  Prussia  in 
1701.  The  second  centenary!  Why!  Alfred,  at 
his  birth,  had  a  royal  descent  from  kings  of  the  West- 
Saxons  of  nearly  four  centuries ;  and  we  now  count 
ten  centuries  more  since  his  death.  The  blood  of 
Alfred  has  descended  from  generation  to  generation  in 
thirty-three  degrees  down  to  King  Edward  the  Seventh, 
who  can  trace  his  ancestry  and  his  throne  in  a  long 
succession  of  nearly  fourteen  centuries  up  to  the  first 
Saxon  conquerors  of  our  island.  I  set  as  little  store 
as  Alfred  himself  by  mere  antiquity  of  birth  —  (high 
birth  is  of  the  mind,  he  says,  not  of  the  flesh)  —  nor 
do  I  rate  extravagantly  mere  effluxion  of  time.  But 
the  historic  imagination  confers  a  halo  on  exalted 
virtue  and  genius  when  it  finds  it  charged  with  tre- 
mendous responsibilities  and  tasks,  when  it  is  mellowed 
by  the  veil  of  a  venerable  antiquity  of  age. 

The  thousandth  year  of  such  a  memory  ought  not 
to  pass  without  a  commemoration  worthy  of  such  a 
name.  Of  the  walls  which  he  raised,  the  halls  wherein 
he  dwelt,  the  churches  and  the  towers  that  he  built, 
it  is  difficult  to-day  to  trace  more  than  a  few  stones. 
His  tomb  even  was  twice  removed,  and  at  last  was 
laid  in  a  new  abbey  some  distance  from  the  spot 
where  his  people  laid  it.  We  have  sought  sorrowing 
the  place  where  our  hero  was  laid.  In  the  last  cen- 
tury the  very  spot  where  his  coffin  was  placed  could 
have  been  identified.  But  rather  more  than  a  hundred 
years  ago  the  very  foundations  of  Hyde  Abbey  were 


THE    MILLENARY    OF    KING    ALFRED  67 

removed.  And  to-day  no  man  can  tell  us  where  the 
dust  of  the  noblest  of  Englishmen  was  scattered.  I 
have  searched  the  spot  in  vain,  though  I  believe  that 
the  very  acre  of  ground  in  which  that  sacred  dust 
still  rests  can  still  with  certainty  be  traced.  But  Win- 
chester, the  home  and  capital  of  the  hero-king  of 
Wessex,  will  not  forget  him.  And  in  a  few  months 
the  grandest  colossal  statue  in  our  country  will  be  set 
up  hard  by  the  foundation  of  his  castle  and  his  church  ; 
and  it  will  bear  witness  for  ages  to  come  that  English- 
men have  not  yet  forgotten  the  founder  of  their 
national  greatness  and  the  noblest  soul  that  England 
ever  bore. 


THE   WRITINGS   OF   KING   ALFRED 

d.  901 


The   Writings   of  King  Alfred 

(Died  901) 

ADDRESS  GIVEN  AT  HARVARD  COLLEGE,   MASS.,   MARCH,    1901 

IN  the  great  days  of  antique  culture,  when  the 
citizen  of  Athens,  coming  from  the  Academus  or 
the  Stoa,  found  himself  in  the  Museum  of  Alexandria, 
or  in  the  schools  of  Syracuse,  Magna  Graecia,  Asia 
Minor,  or  Tyre,  he  felt  that  he  was  still  in  his  own 
country,  both  intellectually  and  morally,  whatever 
might  be  the  state  or  nation  to  which  he  had  trav- 
elled. He  and  his  guests  spoke  but  one  language, 
shared  the  same  civilisation,  and  had  in  common  the 
same  immortal  literature. 

And  now,  a  son  of  Oxford  or  Cambridge  in  the  old 
island  feels  himself  at  home,  amongst  his  own  people 
and  fellow-students,  when  he  is  welcomed  at  Harvard 
of  the  new  continent.  We  all  have  but  one  language, 
the  tongue  now  spoken  by  130,000,000  of  civilised 
men ;  and  we  have  the  same  literature,  the  noblest 
literature  of  the  modern  world.  And  so,  when  I  was 
honoured  with  the  invitation  to  address  you,  I  be- 
thought me  I  would  speak  to  you  of  the  rise  of  that 
literature  which  is  our  common  heritage,  which  more 
than  race,  or  institutions,  or  manners  and  habits,  makes 
us  all  one  —  which  is  far  the  richest,  the  most  con- 

B  71 


72  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

tinuous,  the  most   virile   evolution  of  human  genius 
in  the  records  of  Christendom. 

I  call  to  mind  also  that  this  year  is  the  millenary 
or  thousandth  anniversary  of  the  death,  in  901,  of 
Alfred  the  West  Saxon  King,1  who  is  undoubtedly 
the  founder  of  a  regular  prose  literature,  as  of  so  many 
other  English  institutions  and  ways.  Could  there  be 
a  fitter  theme  for  an  English  man  of  letters  in  an 
American  seat  of  learning  ?  There  was  nothing  in- 
sular about  Alfred  ;  he  was  not  British  ;  he  was  not 
feudal ;  his  memory  is  not  stained  by  any  crime  done  in 
the  struggles  of  nation,  politics,  or  religion.  He  lived 
ages  before  "  Great  Britain  "  was  invented,  mainly,  I 
believe,  in  order  to  humour  our  Scotch  brother-citizens  ; 
ages  before  Protestantism  divided  Christendom  ;  ages 
before  kingship  ceased  to  be  useful  and  republics  began 
to  be  normal.  Alfred  was  never  King  of  England : 
he  lived  and  died  King  of  the  West  Saxons,  the  ances- 
tral head  of  a  Saxon  clan.  He  and  his  people  were 
just  as  much  your  ancestors  as  they  were  mine,  for 
all  we  can  say  is,  that  the  130,000,000  who  speak  our 
Anglo-Saxon  tongue  have  all  a  fairly  equal  claim  to 
look  on  him  as  the  heroic  leader  of  our  remote  fore- 
fathers.2 


1  The  year  901  is  accepted  by  historians  as  the  date  of  Alfred's  death.     Recent 
research  by  competent  paleographers  has  made  it  more  probable  that  he  died  in  899  or 
900.     See  articles  and    letters   in  the  English   Historical  Review,  Atben<eum,  etc. 
The  Millenary  Commemoration  Committee  decided  not  to  enter  on  the  debated  prob- 
lem, but  to  adhere  to  the  date  generally  recognised  when  the  committee  was  formed. 

2  A  large  representative  committee,  of  which  the  King  is  patron,  was  formed  in 
1898  to  commemorate  the  thousandth  anniversary  of  Alfred's  death.     A  grand  colos- 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  73 

But  I  wish  now  to  speak  of  Alfred  not  as  our  father 
in  blood,  or  in  nation,  but  as  the  real  father  of  native 
prose,  that  common  inheritance  of  us  all,  which,  after 
a  thousand  years  of  fertility,  has  lost  none  of  its  vigour, 
its  purity,  and  its  wealth.  The  thousandth  anniver- 
sary of  his  death  has  aroused  new  attention  to  his 
work,  and  has  produced  some  important  books  to 
which  I  will  direct  your  notice.  Of  Alfred  the  man, 
the  warrior,  the  statesman,  the  hero,  the  saint,  I  will 
not  now  speak.  In  each  of  these  characters  he  was 
perfect,  —  the  purest,  grandest,  most  heroic  soul  that 
ever  sprang  from  our  race.  It  is  only  of  Alfred  the 
writer  of  books,  the  creator  of  Saxon  prose,  that  I 
wish  to  speak.  He  was  indeed  one  of  those  rare 
rulers  of  men  who  trust  to  the  book  as  much  as  to 
the  sword,  who  value  the  school  more  than  the  court, 
who  believe  in  no  force  but  the  force  of  thought  and 
of  truth. 

In  that  noble  and  pathetic  preface  to  his  Pastoral 
Care,  Alfred  himself  has  told  us  how  and  why  he 
carried  through  the  restoration  of  learning  in  his 
church  and  people.  When  the  first  long  struggle 
with  the  Danes  was  over,  he  found  his  kingdom 
desolate,  and  ignorance  universal.  There  was  not  one, 
he  says,  on  this  side  of  Humber  who  could  understand 
their  mass-book  or  put  a  letter  from  Latin  into  Eng- 

sal  statue  by  Mr.  Hamo  Thorneycroft,  R.  A.,  is  now  being  raised  at  Winchester,  where 
he  lived  and  died,  by  British  and  American  subscribers.  The  Hon.  Secretary  of  the 
English  committee  is  Mr.  Alfred  Bowker,  Mayor  of  Winchester.  The  Hon.  Treasurer 
is  Lord  Avebury,  of  Robarts,  Lubbock  &  Co. ,  Lombard  Street,  London. 


74  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

lish.  He  groaned  to  think  how  learning  had  flourished 
before  the  great  invasion.  He  wondered  how  the 
good  and  wise  men  of  old  had  omitted  to  translate 
their  Latin  books  into  English,  so  that  the  people 
might  read  them  and  hear  them  read.  He  supposes 
they  could  not  believe  that  learning  would  die  down  so 
utterly.  And  so  the  great  King  set  himself  to  work 
with  all  the  fire  of  one  who  was  both  hero  and  genius 
to  the  twofold  task,  first,  to  restore  learning  and  found  a 
national  education,  and  secondly  to  put  the  great  books 
of  the  world  into  the  mother-tongue  of  his  people. 
For  the  first,  he  gathered  round  him  scholars  from  all 
parts,  without  distinction  of  country  or  race,  Welsh, 
Celts,  Mercians,  Flemings,  Westphalians,  as  well  as  men 
of  Wessex  and  Kent.  The  second  task  he  undertook 
himself.  Having  mastered  Latin  late  in  manhood 
after  strenuous  toil,  he  became  the  first  of  translators, 
and  in  so  doing  he  founded  a  prose  literature. 

As  a  boy,  Alfred  had  shown  his  zest  for  study.  He 
had  been  taken  to  Rome  and  to  the  Court  of  the 
Frank  King.1  But  from  the  age  of  eighteen  he  was 
occupied  for  twenty  years  with  desperate  wars  and 
the  reorganisation  of  his  kingdom.  It  was  not  until 
he  had  been  king  sixteen  years,  and  was  thirty- 
eight  years  old,  that  he  found  himself  free  for  literary 
work.  That  he  did  all  this,  as  he  tells  us  with  stately 

1  I  incline  to  think  that  when  Ethelwulf  sent  the  boy  to  Rome  at  the  age  of  four, 
Alfred  remained  there  for  perhaps  over  two  years  till  his  father  brought  him  back ;  and, 
though  he  did  not  learn  to  read,  his  childish  mind  was  filled  with  what  he  there  heard 
of  antiquity  and  of  the  Christian  world.  The  feet  that  his  name  appears  in  charters 
when  he  was  five  does  not  convince  me. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  75 

pathos,  "in  the  various  and  manifold  worldly  cares 
that  oft  troubled  him  both  in  mind  and  in  body,"  is 
to  me  one  of  the  most  mysterious  tales  of  intellectual 
passion  in  the  history  of  human  thought.  It  places 
him  in  the  rare  rank  of  those  warriors  and  rulers  who, 
amidst  all  the  battle  of  their  lives,  have  left  the  world 
imperishable  works  of  their  own  composition,  such  as 
did  David,  Julius  Caesar,  and  Marcus  Aurelius.1 

The  works  of  Alfred  are  numerous,  important,  and 
admirably  chosen.2  His  Handbook  —  a  sort  of  antho- 
logy or  golden  treasury  of  fine  thoughts  which  he  col- 
lected whilst  Asser  was  reading  to  him  and  teaching 
him  to  translate  —  has  utterly  perished,  though  Will- 
iam of  Malmesbury,  two  centuries  later,  used  and  cited 
it.  Ah!  how  many  libraries  of  volumes  would  we  will- 
ingly lose  to-day  if  time  would  give  up  to  us  from  its 
Lethean  maw  that  well-thumbed  book,  "  about  the  size 
of  a  Psalter,"  that  the  holy  king  was  wont  to  keep  in 
his  bosom  :  the  book  wherein  from  day  to  day  he  noted 
down  in  English  some  great  thought  that  had  im- 
pressed him  in  his  studies. 

1  See  Pauli.      Life  of  Alfred  the   Great,  1851,  translated  by  B.  Thorpe,  Bohn's 
Ecclesiastical  Library,  1857,  with  text  and  translation  of  the   Orosius ;  also  the  Jubilee 
Edition  of  Alfreds   Works,  1852-1853.      The  latest  account  of  Alfred's  career  as 
king,  warrior,  lawgiver,  scholar,  and  author  is  to  be  found  in  the  volume  published  by 
the  Alfred  Commemoration  Committee.    Alfred  the  Great  (Adam  and  Charles  Black), 
London,  1899.      8vo. 

2  For  the  writings  of  King  Alfred,  consult  the  work  just  referred  to  and  the  essays 
therein  of  the   Bishop  of  Bristol,  and  Rev.  Professor  Earle  ;  also   see   Mr.    Stopford 
Brooke's  English  Literature  to  the  Norman  Conquest.      Macmillan  &  Co.,  1898.     8vo. 
Chapter  xiv,  and  R.  P.  Wiilker's  Grundrisi  sur  Gescbicbte  der  Angelsacbsiscben  Lit- 
ter at  ur. 


76  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

After  his  personal  Handbook  of  thoughts  came  Al- 
fred's Laws,1  which  we  possess  intact  in  several  ver- 
sions. This  book  for  literary  purposes  is  interesting 
only  by  its  preface,  evidently  dictated  by  the  King  him- 
self. Here  we  have  in  a  sentence  that  spirit  of  order, 
of  simplicity,  of  modesty,  of  self-control,  of  respect  for 
public  opinion,  of  reverence  for  the  past  time,  and  of 
solemn  consideration  of  the  times  to  come,  which 
stamps  the  whole  career  of  Alfred  as  ruler. 

"  I,  Alfred  the  King,  gathered  these  laws  together  and 
ordered  many  to  be  written  which  our  forefathers  held,  such 
as  I  approved ;  and  many  which  I  approved  not  I  rejected, 
and  had  other  ordinances  enacted  with  the  counsel  of  my 
Witan  ;  for  I  dared  not  venture  to  set  much  of  my  own  upon 
the  Statute-book,  for  I  knew  not  what  might  be  approved  by 
those  who  should  come  after  us.  But  such  ordinances  as  I 
found,  either  in  the  time  of  my  kinsman  Ina,  or  of  Offa,  King 
of  the  Mercians,  or  of  Ethelberht,  who  first  received  baptism 
in  England  —  such  as  seemed  to  me  rightest  I  have  collected 
here,  and  the  rest  I  have  let  drop.  I,  then,  Alfred,  King  of  the 
West  Saxons,  showed  these  laws  to  all  my  Witan,  and  they 
then  said  that  they  all  approved  of  them  as  proper  to  be  holden." 

There  spoke  the  soul  of  the  true  conservative,  moder- 
ate, and  far-seeing  chief  of  a  free  people,  a  creator  of 
states,  such  as  were  Solon  and  Servius  in  antiquity  ; 
such  as  were,  in  later  days,  some  adored  chief  of  a  free 
people,  a  William  the  Silent,  or  a  George  Washington. 
The  books  of  which  Alfred  is  certainly  and  strictly 

1  Dr.  Felix  Liebermann's  Gcsetze  der  Angehacbten,  1898,  etc.  410.  The  latest 
critical  edition  of  the  Saxon  laws ;  also  see  the  essay,  in  the  joint  volume,  by  Professor 
Sir  Frederick  Pollock. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 


77 


the  author  are  five  in  number  ;  all  translations  or  adap- 
tations from  the  Latin,  and  all  typical  works  of  standard 
authority.  They  were  evidently  selected  with  a  broad 
and  discerning  judgment.  Alfred's  mind  was  essen- 
tially historic  and  cosmopolitan.  So  he  began  with 
the  standard  text-book  of  general  history,  the  work 
of  St.  Augustine's  disciple  and  colleague,  Orosius,  of 
the  fifth  century.  Alfred  again  was  preeminently  the 
patriot  —  the  parent  pafri*.  And  accordingly  he  chose 
the  History  of  the  Church  in  England,  or  rather  the 
Christian  history  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  federation,  by 
the  Venerable  Bede,  to  give  his  people  the  annals  of 
their  own  ancestors.  Alfred  again  felt  a  prime  need 
of  restoring  the  church  in  knowledge  and  in  zeal. 
And  so  he  translated  the  famous  Pastoral  Care  of 
Gregory  the  Great  —  the  accepted  manual  for  training 
to  the  priestly  office.  A  second  work  of  Pope  Greg- 
ory which  he  translated  was  the  Dialogues,  a  collection 
of  popular  tales.  Lastly,  came  the  translation,  para- 
phrase, or  recasting  of  Boethius's  Consolation  of  Phi- 
losophy—  far  the  most  original  and  important  of  all 
Alfred's  writings.  He  thus  provided  (i)  a  history  of 
the  world,  (2)  a  history  of  his  own  country,  (3)  a  text- 
book of  education  of  the  priesthood,  (4)  a  people's 
story  book,  (5)  moral  and  religious  meditations.  I 
will  speak  of  each  of  these,  but  principally  of  the  last, 
the  Boethius,  which,  by  its  originality  and  its  beauty, 
gives  us  far  the  truest  insight  into  the  inner  faith  and 
the  literary  genius  of  the  King. 

There  were  some  other  works  in  which  his  impulse 


78  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

is  seen,  but  where  his  actual  hand  is  not  certainly  to 
be  proved.  First  and  foremost  comes  the  Saxon 
Chronicle?  the  most  authentic  and  important  record  of 
its  youth  which  any  modern  nation  possesses.  Dur- 
ing the  active  life  of  Alfred  this  yearly  record  of  events 
is  undoubtedly  of  contemporaneous  authorship ;  and 
for  the  most  important  years  of  Alfred's  reign  it  is  very 
full  and  keenly  interesting.  The  evidence  is  conclusive 
that  the  King  gave  the  most  powerful  stimulus  to  the 
compilation  of  the  record,  and  thus  was  the  founder 
of  a  systematic  history  of  our  country  ;  for  we  may 
truly  say  that  no  error  of  the  least  importance  has  ever 
been  proven  against  the  Chronicle^  which  is  properly 
regarded  as  the  touchstone  of  historic  veracity  to  which 
all  other  annals  are  submitted.  It  is  to  my  judgment 
clear  that  the  history  of  the  wars  with  the  Danes  as 
told  in  the  Chronicle  was  prepared  under  the  personal 
direction  of  the  chief  himself,  if  it  was  not  actually 
dictated  by  his  lips. 

The  King  is  said  to  have  begun  a  translation  of  the 
Psalms  of  David,  which  was  cut  short  by  his  death ; 
but  of  these  we  have  no  known  copy.  The  Soliloquies 
of  St.  Augustine2  is  of  his  age,  and  has  been  imputed 
to  his  authorship.  I  incline  to  the  belief  that  the 
preface  is  his  own  work,  and  that  he  superintended,  if 
he  did  not  execute,  the  translation.  The  same  may 


1  Saxon  Chronicle.  Text  of  all  manuscripts  and  translation  by  B.  Thorpe.  Rolls 
Series,  1861. 

a  Soliloyuiet  of  St.  siugustine.  Text  in  The  Shrine,  by  Rev.  T.  Oswald  Cockayne, 
1864-1870.  8vo. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  79 

be  the  truth  of  the  Book  of  Martyrs.1  Lastly,  there 
is  the  King's  Testament,  which,  though  highly  interest- 
ing, is  hardly  a  literary  composition.  No  one  accepts 
the  authenticity  of  the  Proverbs  of  Alfred,  composed 
some  centuries  later,  nor  do  we  attribute  to  him  the 
translation  of  the  Fables  of  dEsop,  nor  the  treatise  on 
Falconry.  But  these  and  some  other  works  that 
are  ascribed  to  him  testify  to  the  belief  of  ages  long 
after  his  death  that  his  literary  activity  was  of  wide 
range  and  of  permanent  value. 

After  studying  the  arguments  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
scholars  about  the  order  of  time  in  the  composition 
of  these  works,  I  incline  to  the  view  of  Mr.  Stopford 
Brooke  in  his  History  of  English  Literature  to  the 
Norman  Conquest,  1898.  He  makes  the  order  this, — 
the  Pastoral  Care,  the  Bede,  the  Orosius,  and  lastly  the 
Boethius.  This,  at  least,  is  the  order  I  shall  adopt ; 
and  it  certainly  lends  itself  best  to  the  literary  estimate. 
Most  authorities  put  the  Boethius  earlier.  But  we 
must  not  rely  too  exclusively  on  paleography  and  dia- 
lectic variations  in  this  matter.  Paleographists  and 
the  dialect  experts  wage  incessantly  their  own  civil 
wars,  and  I  am  not  always  ready  to  swear  fealty  to 
the  victor  or  the  survivor  of  the  hour.2  A  consen- 
sus of  paleographists  and  experts  in  dialect  is  conclu- 
sive, or  conclusive  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  until  we  know 
all  the  circumstances  under  which  a  given  manuscript 
was  written,  I  am  not  prepared  to  surrender  my  own 

1  Book  of  Martyrs.      Text  in  The  Shrine. 

2  Wiilker  (op.  cit. )  gives  a  table  of  these  differences  amongst  the  editors. 


8O  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

common  sense.  There  is  a  historical  and  a  literary 
flair  in  these  things,  which  ought  not  to  be  lightly 
distrusted,  unless  contradicted  by  indisputable  written 
proof.  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  Alfred 
wrote  much,  or  even  at  all,  with  his  own  hand.  Most 
great  men  of  action  dictate,  and  do  not  hold  the  pen. 
And  the  fact  that  a  given  manuscript  has  traces  of  a 
Mercian  or  a  Northumbrian  dialect  is  no  sufficient 
proof  that  it  could  not  be  Alfred's  work,  unless  we 
can  prove  that  no  Mercian,  no  Northumbrian,  ever 
copied  a  book  which  Alfred  had  dictated,  composed, 
or  directed  to  be  written. 

The  na'if  and  pathetic  preface  to  the  Pastoral  Care 1 
of  Pope  Gregory  the  Great  is  unquestionably  the 
King's  own  work,  and  is  a  touching  revelation  of  his 
intense  love  for  his  native  land  and  his  passion  to 
give  his  people  a  higher  education.  I  cannot  read 
that  simple  outpouring  of  soul  by  the  great  reformer 
without  seeing  the  confession  that  it  was  a  most  urgent 
task,  and  his  own  first  attempt  at  translating ;  and  thus 
I  judge  it  to  come  next  after  his  Handbook  and  his 
Laws.  It  was  natural  that  a  great  and  systematic 
restorer  of  learning  should  begin  with  the  training  of 
those  who  were  to  teach.  And  thus  Alfred's  first 
great  literary  work  was  the  translation  of  the  standard 
manual  for  the  education  of  the  clergy  and  of  other 
scholars.  He  would  often  meditate,  he  says,  what 
wise  men,  what  happy  times  there  were  of  old  in 

1  Cura  Pastoralit.  Text  and  translation,  edited  by  H.  Sweet.  Early  English  Text 
Society,  1871.  8vo.  For  the  preface,  see  Stopford  Brooke,  of.  cit.,  p.  24. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  8 1 

England,  how  kings  preserved  peace,  morality,  and 
order  at  home,  and  enlarged  their  borders  without, 
how  foreigners  came  to  the  land  in  search  of  wisdom 

D 

and  instruction.  Now,  he  groans  out,  all  is  changed, 
and  in  these  days  of  war  and  distress  hardly  a  man 
could  read  a  Latin  book.  And  yet,  he  adds,  what 
punishments  would  come  upon  us  if  we  neither  loved 
wisdom  nor  suffered  other  men  to  obtain  it:  we  should 
love  the  name  only  of  Christian,  and  very  few  of  the 
virtues.  Then  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  ravages 
and  burnings  of  the  Danes,  how  the  few  books  left 
were  in  Latin,  and  how  few  Englishmen  could  read 
that  tongue.  "Therefore,"  he  says,  "it  seems  better 
to  me  to  translate  some  books,  which  are  most  needful 
for  all  men  to  know,  into  the  language  which  we  can 
all  understand.  And  this  I  would  have  you  do,  if 
we  can  preserve  peace,  to  set  all  the  youth  now  in  Eng- 
land of  free  men,  whose  circumstances  enable  them 
to  devote  themselves  to  it,  to  learn  as  long  as  they 
are  not  old  enough  for  other  occupations,  until  they 
are  well  able  to  read  English  writing."  Here  was  a 
scheme  of  primary  education  for  the  people,  education 
which  was  not  made  effective  in  our  country  until  my 
own  lifetime.  And  then  he  goes  on  to  the  higher 
education,  ordaining  that  "  those  be  afterwards  taught 
more  in  the  Latin  language  who  are  to  continue  learn- 
ing and  be  promoted  to  a  higher  rank."  Next,  he 
tells  us  how  he  began  "among  other  various  and 
manifold  troubles  of  this  kingdom  to  translate  into 
English  the  book  which  is  called  in  Latin  Pastoralis, 


82  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

and  in  English  Shepherd's  Book,  sometimes  word  for 
word,  and  sometimes  according  to  the  sense,  as  I  had 
learnt  it  from  Plegmund,  my  Archbishop,  and  Asser, 
my  bishop,  and  Grimbold,  my  mass-priest,  and  John, 
my  mass-priest.  And  when  I  had  learnt  it,  as  I  could 
best  understand  it,  and  as  I  could  most  clearly  interpret 
it,  I  translated  it  into  English;  and  I  will  send  a  copy 
to  every  bishopric  in  my  kingdom." 

Here,  then,  is  a  great  ruler,  more  than  a  thousand 
years  ago,  when  the  area  and  population  of  his  own 
country  were  far  below  those  of  a  state  of  the  Union, 
when  their  very  existence  was  at  stake,  and  they  were 
surrounded  by  ferocious  invaders,  who  designs  a  scheme 
for  primary  and  superior  education,  and  restores  the 
church  and  the  schools.  Here  is  the  man  who  began, 
and  certainly  had  he  been  longer  lived  and  enjoyed 
peace,  might  have  carried  through,  the  translation  of 
the  Bible,  seven  centuries  before  it  was  actually  accom- 
plished. There  is  a  most  fascinating  relic  connected  with 
this  very  work.  The  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford  pos- 
sesses the  very  copy  which  the  King  sent  to  Worces- 
ter. It  is  inscribed  ©EOS  Boc  SCEAL  To  WIOGARA 
CEASTRE,  i.e.  This  book  shall  (go)  to  Worcester^  I 
saw  it  when  I  was  last  in  Oxford.  And  when  I  took 
in  my  own  hands  the  very  copy  of  his  toil  which  Al- 
fred a  thousand  years  ago  sent  with  his  greeting  to  his 
Bishop  at  Worcester,  which  he  solemnly  commanded 
in  the  name  of  God  no  man  should  remove  from  the 
Minster ;  when  I  held  in  my  hand  in  the  Ashmolean 

1  Bodleian  Library.     Manuscripts.      Hatton,  zo. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  83 

Museum l  the  very  jewel  which  the  King  had  made 
for  himself  (perhaps  to  bear  upon  his  sceptre)  inscribed, 
—  ALlfred  had  me  worked,  —  I  felt  something  of  that 
thrill  which  men  of  old  felt  when  they  kissed  a  frag- 
ment of  the  true  cross,  or  which  the  Romans  felt  when 
they  saluted  the  Sibylline  books.  If  to-day  we  fall  short 
in  the  power  of  mystical  imagination,  our  saner  relic- 
worship  is  founded  upon  history,  scholarship,  and  jeal- 
ous searching  into  the  minutest  footprints  of  the  past. 

Of  the  Dialogues  of  Gregory,  we  need  say  little,  for 
the  translation  as  yet  exists  only  in  three  manuscripts. 
But  I  follow  the  view  of  Professor  Earle,  that  the  book 
is  the  King's  work,  as  the  characteristic  preface  most 
obviously  is.2  "  I,  Alfred,"  it  runs,  "  by  the  grace  of 
God,  dignified  with  the  honour  of  royalty,  have  under- 
stood and  have  often  heard  from  reading  holy  books 
that  we  to  whom  God  hath  given  so  much  eminence 
of  worldly  distinction,  have  peculiar  need  at  times  to 
humble  and  subdue  our  minds  to  the  divine  and  spir- 
itual law,  in  the  midst  of  this  earthly  anxiety : "  .  .  . 
"  that  I  may  now  and  then  contemplate  the  heavenly 
things  in  the  midst  of  these  earthly  troubles." 

In  the  Pastoral  Care  the  King  carefully  followed  the 
text  of  the  Latin,  neither  adding  nor  omitting  any- 
thing in  a  revered  book  of  such  authority  by  the  spir- 
itual founder  of  Saxon  Christianity.  And  in  a  first 
essay  he  proceeded  with  scrupulous  attention  to  his 

1  Now  deposited  in  the  Taylor  Museum,  Oxford,  and  described  'in  a  new  work  by 
Professor  Earle —  The  Alfred  Jewel,  an  Historical  Essay.  1901.  Clarendon  Press. 
Cr.  8vo.  2  Professor  Earle' s  essay  in  joint  volume,  p.  198. 


84  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

original.  As  he  advanced  in  scholarship  and  literary 
skill,  he  became  much  more  free,  until  in  the  Boethius 
he  uses  the  Latin  almost  as  a  text  for  his  own  medita- 
tions. In  the  translation  of  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory? Alfred  omits  many  sections,  of  which  he  gives  a 
list ;  but  he  adds  nothing,  although  there  were  many 
points  as  to  the  history  of  Wessex  wherein  he  might 
have  corrected  and  supplemented  Bede's  meagre  state- 
ments. The  translation  keeps  fairly  well  to  the  origi- 
nal, but  it  has  no  special  literary  value.  The  next 
translation  of  the  King  was  the  History  of  the  World 
by  Orosius,2  which  St.  Augustine  suggested  as  a  com- 
panion to  his  own  argument,  in  the  City  of  God^  that 
the  wars  and  desolation  of  the  Roman  world  were  not 
caused  by  the  spread  of  the  Gospel.  It  was  the  only 
book  known  in  the  Middle  Ages  as  a  universal  his- 
tory, and  it  was  as  such  that  Alfred  put  it  forth.  But, 
as  his  object  was  essentially  to  educate,  he  adds  full 
explanations  of  matters  which  Saxons  would  not  easily 
follow,  and  his  very  elaborate  additions  on  geography, 
the  topography  of  the  German  peoples,  the  account  of 
the  Baltic  and  Scandinavia  by  the  Norseman,  Ohthere, 
have  a  freshness,  a  distinctness,  and  precision  which  pe- 
culiarly stamp  the  organising  and  eager  grasp  of  a  born 
explorer,  who  believed  with  the  Prophet — "  many  shall 
run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  increased." 

1  B.Tda's  Ecclesiastical  History.     Text  and  modern  English,  by  T.  Miller  (E.  E. 
Text  Society),  1890-1898. 

2  Orosius.     Text  and  Latin  by  H.  Sweet  (E.  E.  Text  Society),  and  also  by  Thorpe, 
in  Pauli's  Life,  translated.     See  Note  i,  p.  75. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  85 

We  come  now  to  Alfred's  Boetbiusy  far  the  most 
important  work  of  his  pen.  It  is  almost  an  original 
treatise,  so  great  are  the  variations,  additions  to,  and 
omissions  from  the  Latin  text.  Whole  chapters  are 
dropped  by  the  translator,  and  page  after  page  of  new 
thoughts  are  inserted.  Some  idea  of  the  extent  of  this 
paraphrasing  may  be  got,  when  we  find  the  first  twelve 
pages  of  the  Latin  compressed  into  two  of  Alfred's, 
and  nearly  the  whole  of  the  last  book  of  the  Latin, 
occupying  fifteen  octavo  pages,  dropped  altogether, 
and  new  matter  of  the  King's,  filling  nine  pages,  in- 
serted. Alfred  took  the  Meditations  of  Boethius  as 
a  standard  text-book  of  moral  and  religious  thought, 
and  he  uses  it  as  the  basis  of  his  own  musings  upon 
man,  the  world,  and  God.  Alfred  intends  his  book 
to  be  for  the  edification  of  his  own  people.  And,  ac- 
cordingly, he  drops  most  of  the  classical  philosophy  ; 
expands  and  explains  the  mythological  and  poetic  allu- 
sions ;  and  changes  the  Platonic  theism  of  Boethius 
into  Biblical  and  Christian  divinity.  The  transforma- 
tion is  astonishing.  As  we  read  the  Latin  we  find  it 
difficult  to  understand  why  a  book  so  abstract,  and  in 
places  so  metaphysical  and  technical,  held  the  world 
of  European  culture  for  a  thousand  years  down  to  the 
age  of  Shakespeare.  But,  when  we  turn  to  Alfred's 
piece,  we  are  in  the  world  of  those  poignant  searchings 
of  heart  which  pervade  the  Psalms  of  David,  the  Imi- 
tation of  Christ^  and  the  devotional  books  of  Jeremy 
Taylor. 

The   millenary   commemoration   of  the    King    has 


86  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

drawn  fresh  attention  both  to  Boethius  and  to  Alfred's 
translation,  and  we  may  say  that  it  is  only  in  recent 
years  that  we  have  had  adequate  studies  of  both.  Dr. 
Hodgkin's  Italy  and  her  Invaders  and  Mr.  Stewart's 
excellent  volume  on  Boethius1  have  collected  in  con- 
venient form  almost  everything  that  is  known  about 
the  Roman  philosopher.  And  quite  lately  Mr.  Sedge- 
field,  of  Melbourne  and  Cambridge  universities,  has 
published  two  books  on  Alfred's  version  :  the  first, 
a  critical  edition  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  text  from  the 
manuscript  with  a  Glossary,  the  second  a  version  in 
modern  English  prose, and  an  alliterative  version  of  the 
metres.2  Both  the  text  and  the  modern  rendering  by 
Mr.  Sedgefield  are  an  immense  improvement  both  in 
accuracy,  scholarship,  and  elegance  on  the  earlier  edi- 
tions whether  of  the  old  or  the  new  versions.  And  it 
is  only  now,  by  Mr.  Sedgefield's  aid,  and  with  the 
essays  by  the  Bishop  of  Bristol  and  Professor  Earle 
in  the  recent  volume  Alfred  the  Great,  1899,  edited 
by  the  Hon.  Secretary  of  the  Millenary  Commemora- 
tion Committee,  and  with  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's 
excellent  chapter  in  his  book  already  cited,  that  the 
real  power  of  Alfred's  work  can  be  fully  understood 
by  the  general  reader. 

This  is  not  the  occasion  to  enlarge  on  the  story  of 

1  Italy  and  her  Invaders,  by  Dr.  T.  Hodglcin,  second  edition,  1896.  Vol.  Ill, 
chap.  xii.  Oxford  University  Press.  Sottbius.  An  essay  by  Hugh  Fraser  Stewart, 
1891.  8vo. 

a  King  Alfred"  t  Old  English  Version  of  Boctbiui  dt  Consolatione  Philosophise,  by 
Walter  J.  Sedgefield,  Oxford  University  Press,  1899,  and  King  Alfred's  Version  of  the 
Consolations  of  Soethiut,  done  into  Modern  English,  by  the  same.  Oxford  University 
Press,  1900. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  87 

Boethius  himself,  or  the  strange  fortune  of  his  famous 
book.  Dr.  Hodgkin  has  given  good  reason  to  think 
that  his  political  career  was  not  one  of  such  perfect 
loyalty  and  wisdom.  And,  if  Alfred's  introduction  and 
zealous  defence  of  him  contains,  as  is  probable,  the 
church  tradition  about  his  life  and  death,  Theodoric 
might  fairly  regard  him  as  an  enemy  and  a  traitor. 
The  King  tells  us  that  Boethius  cast  about  within 
himself  how  he  might  wrest  the  sovereignty  from  the 
unrighteous  King  of  the  Goths,  and  that  he  sent  word 
privily  to  the  Caesar  at  Constantinople  to  help  the 
Romans  back  to  their  Christian  faith  and  their  old  laws. 

If  Theodoric  had  grounds  to  believe  that  Boethius 
was  really  taking  part  in  a  conspiracy  to  urge  the 
Eastern  emperor  to  do  what,  in  the  next  generation, 
Justinian  did  when  he  destroyed  the  Gothic  kingdom 
in  Italy,  he  would  naturally  treat  the  great  Roman 
chief  of  the  senate  as  a  conspirator.  It  is  not  so  im- 
probable that  the  story,  which  Alfred  may  have  heard 
at  Rome  itself  not  more  than  three  hundred  years 
after  the  fall  of  the  Gothic  kingdom,  and  which  he 
treats  as  ample  justification  of  Boethius,  was  the  true 
story,  or,  if  greatly  exaggerated,  still  having  a  substantial 
basis  in  fact.  If  so,  Theodoric  did  not  suddenly  be- 
come a  ferocious  tyrant ;  and  St.  Severinus,  as  Boe- 
thius was  called  in  the  church,  lost  his  life  and  liberty 
in  an  abortive  and  very  dangerous  clerical  conspiracy 
to  destroy  the  Goths  and  restore  Italy  to  the  Greek 
empire. 

But  the  special  point  to  which  I  wish  to  call  your 


88  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

attention  is  the  literary  beauty  of  Alfred's  own  work. 
I  estimate  that  about  one-quarter  of  the  whole  book 
is  original  matter  and  not  translation.  There  are 
seldom  two  consecutive  pages  in  which  new  matter  does 
not  occur ;  and  there  are  nine  consecutive  pages,  in 
Mr.  Sedgefield's  editions  both  of  the  Saxon  and  the 
modern  English,  which  are  Alfred's  original,  so  that 
we  are  well  able  to  judge  both  matter  and  form  of  the 
King's  work.  Indeed,  the  Consolations  of  Alfred  differ 
from  that  of  Boethius  as  much  as  the  Confessions  of  St. 
Augustine  differ  from  the  ethical  Treatises  of  Seneca. 
The  Consolation  of  Philosophy  seems  to  have  had  a 
curious  attraction  for  translators  in  many  languages. 
Mr.  Stewart  (in  his  sixth  chapter)  has  given  an  inter- 
esting account  of  a  great  many  of  these,  both  English 
and  foreign.  The  list  of  them  fills  many  pages  in 
the  British  Museum  Catalogue.  Mr.  Sedgefield  gives 
a  long  account  of  English  translations  in  prose  and 
verse,  beginning  with  Chaucer,  just  five  hundred  years 
after  Alfred,  and  continuing  down  to  that  of  H.  R. 
James  in  1897.  In  all,  Mr.  Sedgefield  gives  speci- 
mens of  no  less  than  fourteen  versions,  from  Chaucer 
to  the  present  day,  of  which  five  are  in  prose.  The 
most  interesting  of  these  versions  are  the  two  in  prose  : 
one  by  Chaucer  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  one 
by  our  Queen  Elizabeth  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. We  have  thus  ample  opportunity  for  comparing 
the  work  of  Alfred  with  that  of  other  translators  in 
the  course  of  no  less  than  five  centuries.  And  I 
cannot  withhold  my  own  deliberate  conviction  that,  as 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  89 

prose  literature,  the  version  of  Alfred,  in  its  simplicity, 
dignity,  and  power,  is  a  finer  type  than  any  of  the 
successors. 

This  is  truly  wonderful  when  we  remember  that  the 
first  translation  is  that  of  our  great  poet,  Geoffrey 
Chaucer.  But  poets  do  not  always  write  fine  prose ; 
and  in  the  fourteenth  century  English  prose  was  in 
a  conglomerate  and  formless  state.  I  will  illustrate 
this  by  one  or  two  instances,  setting  Alfred's  prose 
beside  that  of  Chaucer.  Of  course,  to  make  myself 
intelligible,  I  shall  transliterate  Alfred's  Anglo-Saxon 
into  current  English,  using  Mr.  Sedgefield's  admirable 
version.  But  this  version  is  not  really  a  translation. 
It  follows  the  words  of  Alfred  punctiliously,  often 
changing  nothing  or  little  in  the  order,  and  removing 
little  but  the  terminals  and  archaic  forms  of  the  words. 
This  is  transliteration,  but  not  translation.  I  need  not 
go  into  the  question  whether  Alfred's  Anglo-Saxon  is 
English.  He  calls  it  English,  and  in  spite  of  differ- 
ences of  construction,  syntax,  grammar,  and  vocables, 
it  is  the  basis  of  English  :  perhaps  two-thirds  of  it 
closely  akin  to  some  English  dialects  as  spoken  within 
a  few  centuries  ago.  The  fact  that  the  ordinary  Eng- 
lish reader  cannot  read  a  line  of  it,  is  not  conclusive. 
He  cannot  read  a  line  of  Layamon's  Brut  or  the  Ancren 
Riwle?  both  about  a  century  and  a  half  after  the  Con- 
quest ;  nor  indeed  could  he  read  a  paragraph  written 
phonetically  in  pure  Scottish  or  Yorkshire  dialect. 

1  Specimens  of  Early  English,  by  Morris  &  Skeat       Oxford  University  Press. 


9O  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

I  shall  not  enter  on  the  question  whether  Alfred  is 
the  founder  of  English  prose.  Alfred  certainly  wrote 
or  dictated  a  fine,  organic,  rhythmical  prose  in  the 
mother-tongue  used  by  himself  and  his  people  in  the 
southwest  and  centre  of  England.  Three-fourths  of 
the  words  in  that  tongue  survive  in  some  altered  form 
in  English  speech  and  its  dialectic  varieties.  Whether 
it  be  the  same  language  as  English,  depends  on  what 
we  mean  by  that  phrase.  Grammar,  syntax,  pronunci- 
ation, have  changed.  The  words  mostly  remain  under 
modern  disguises.  I  am  not  satisfied  by  the  trenchant 
decision  of  Professor  Marsh  (Origin  and  History  of  the 
English  Language).  I  prefer  the  views  of  Skeat,  Morris, 
Earle,  Green,  and  Stopford  Brooke.  I  do  not  say  as 
they  do,  that  Alfred  founded  English  prose.  But  in 
any  case,  he  founded  a  prose  in  the  language  which  is 
the  basis  of  English. 

I  now  give  parallel  passages  from  Alfred  and  from 
Chaucer.  I  take  first  Alfred's  rendering  of  the  fifth 
metre  of  Boethius's  first  book  :  the  grand  hymn  —  O 
stelliferi  conditor  orbis.  Alfred's  prose  version  is  this, 
using  always  Mr.  Sedgefield  :  — 

"  O  thou  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  rulest  on  the 
eternal  throne,  Thou  that  makest  the  heavens  to  turn  in  swift 
course,  and  the  stars  to  obey  Thee,  and  the  sun  with  his  shin- 
ing beams  to  quench  the  darkness  of  black  night :  —  (I  omit 
four  lines)  Thou  that  givest  short  hours  to  the  days  of  winter, 
and  longer  ones  to  those  of  summer,  Thou  that  in  harvest-tide 
with  the  strong  North-east  wind  spoilest  the  trees  of  their 
leaves,  and  again  in  lenten-tide  givest  them  fresh  ones  with 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  9! 

the  soft  south-west  winds,  lo  !  all  creatures  do  Thy  will,  and 
keep  the  ordinances  of  Thy  commandments,  save  man  only ; 
he  setteth  Thee  at  naught."  (Sedgefield,  p.  5.) 

Now  here  we  have  rhythm,  force,  dignity,  and  purity 
of  phrase.  This  is  fine  literary  prose  —  as  Mr.  Stewart 
well  says,  "  his  prose  is  informed  with  intensity  and 
fire,  and  possesses  all  the  vigour  and  swing  of  verse." 
Or,  as  Professor  Earle  says,  it  has  "a  very  genuine 
elevation  without  strain  or  effort."  It  is  true  that  in 
Mr.  Sedgefield's  English  the  order  of  words  and  the 
terminations  are  varied  ;  but  the  original  has  to  my  ear 
the  same  fine  roll :  — 

Eala  thu  scippend  heofenes  and  eorthan,  thu  the  on 
tha  ecan  setle  ricsast,  thu  the  on  hroedum  foerelde  thone 
heofon  ymbhweorfest,  and  tha  tunglu  thu  gedest  the 
gehyrsume.1 

I  now  turn  to  Chaucer's2  prose  version  of  the  same 
passage,  modernising  the  orthography  :  — 

"  O  thou  maker  of  the  wheel  that  beareth  the  stars,  which 
that  art  fastened  to  thy  perdurable  chair,  and  turnest  the 
heaven  with  a  ravishing  sway,  and  constrainest  the  stars  to 
suffer  thy  law ;  so  that  the  moon  sometime  shining  with  her 
full  horns,  meeting  with  all  the  beams  of  the  sun,  her  brother, 
hideth  the  stars  that  be  less ;  and  sometime,  when  the  moon, 
pale  with  her  dark  horns,  approacheth  the  sun,  Ibseth  her 
lights :  .  .  .  Thou  restrainest  the  day  by  shorter  dwelling, 
'n  the  time  of  cold  winter  that  maketh  the  leaves  to  fall. 


1  Sedgefield's  Anglo-Saxon  text,  p.  IO. 

2  The   Complete   Works  of  Chaucer,   by  W.  W.  Skeat,  D.C.L.      Seven  volumes. 
8vo.      Oxford  University  Press,  1894-1897,  Vol.  II,  p.  16. 


92  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

Thou  dividest  the  swift  tides  of  the  night,  when  the  hot 
summer  is  come.  Thy  might  attempereth  the  variant  seasons 
of  the  year  ;  so  that  Zephyrus,  the  debonair  wind,  bringeth 
again  in  the  first  summer  season  the  leaves  that  the  wind 
hight  Boreas  hath  reft  away  in  autumn,  that  is  to  say,  in  the 
last  end  of  summer.  There  is  nothing  unbound  from  his 
old  law,  nor  forsakes  the  work  of  his  proper  estate.  O  thou 
governour  governing  all  things  by  certain  end,  why  refusest 
thou  only  to  govern  the  works  of  men  by  due  manner." 

Let  us  turn  to  the  version  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
made  exactly  two  centuries  later  :  — 

"  O  framer  of  starry  circle 

who  leaning  to  the  lasting  groundstone 
With  whirling  blast  heavens  turnest 

and  Law  compellst  the  skies  to  bear, 
Now  that  with  full  horn, 

meeting  all  her  brother's  flames 
the  lesser  stars  the  moon  dims 

Now  dark  and  pale  her  horn."  x 

But  I  cannot  inflict  on  you  any  more  of  her  Majesty's 
doggrel.     She  should  have  sent  for  Spenser  or  Shake- 
speare to  help  her,  if  she  was  bent  on  poetry. 
Here  is  a  specimen  of  the  Queen's  prose  :  — 

"  This,  when  with  continual  woe  I  had  burst  out,  seeing 
her  with  mild  countenance  nothing  moved  by  my  moans  : 
c  When  thee,'  quoth  she,  l  sad  and  wailing  I  saw,  straight  a 
wretch  and  exile  I  knew  thee,  but  how  far  off  thy  banishment 
was,  but  that  thou  toldest,  I  knew  not.'  " 

What  a  rigmarole  in  Queen's  English  !     A  question 


i  Boetbius  (E.  E.  Text  Society,  1899).     Manuscripts  Record  Office, 
Domestic  Elizabeth,  289. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  93 

may  be  asked  —  how  can  it  be  that  the  Saxon  of 
Alfred  in  the  ninth  century  can  bear  any  comparison 
with  the  English  of  Chaucer  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
much  less  with  the  prose  in  the  age  of  Shakespeare, 
Bacon,  and  Hooker  in  the  sixteenth  century  ?  The 
answer  I  think  is  this.  The  old  English  of  Alfred  was 
a  very  simple,  perfectly  pure,  and  unmixed  dialect  of 
the  great  Gothic  family  of  languages,  of  the  Low- 
German  class.  It  is  homogeneous,  with  a  limited 
vocabulary,  using  case  endings  like  Latin,  and  not 
many  prepositions.  It  was  an  easy  instrument  to 
wield,  and  a  man  of  genius,  nurtured  in  the  poetry  of 
centuries  could  at  once  become  master  of  it.  In 
the  age  of  Chaucer,  English  had  become  much  in- 
creased in  its  vocabulary ;  thousands  of  French  and 
Latin  words  were  being  assimilated  or  tried;  the  struc- 
tural form  had  been  changed ;  and  English  prose  was 
in  a  chaotic  state,  a  state  of  solution.  Chaucer's  prose 
is  immeasurably  inferior  to  his  verse.  He  did  make 
a  verse  rendering  of  the  fifth  metre  of  Book  II  — 
Felix  nimium  prior  aetas1  which  makes  us  long  that 
he  had  translated  Boethius's  whole  work  into  poetry, 
not  into  prose.  Prose,  as  every  one  knows,  is  a  plant 
of  much  slower  growth  than  poetry.  I  am  prepared 
to  say  it  is  more  difficult,  and  in  its  highest  flights  a 
gift  far  more  rare.  And  even  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth, 
seven  hundred  years  after  Alfred,  English  prose  was 

1  Given  by  Skeat  in  his  Chaucer ,  Vol.  I,  p.  380.     Slightly  modernised  it  runs  :  — 

"  A  blissful  life,  a  peaceful  and  a  sweet, 
Ledden  the  peoples  in  a  former  age  — " 


94  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

only    becoming   perfectly   organic   in    the    hands    of 
Hooker  and  Bacon. 

But  my  purpose  was  not  to  make  comparisons,  but 
to  direct  attention  to  the  dignity  and  beauty  of  Alfred's 
own  thoughts.  And  for  that  end  I  will  take  a  few 
passages  which  are  Alfred's  own,  not  translations  from 
Boethius.  Here  is  a  bit  from  his  introduction  :  — 

"  But  cruel  King  Theodoric  heard  of  these  designs,  and 
straightway  commanded  that  Boethius  be  thrust  into  a  dun- 
geon and  kept  locked  therein.  Now,  when  this  good  man 
fell  into  so  great  straits,  he  waxed  sore  of  mind,  by  so  much 
the  more  that  he  had  once  known  happier  days.  In  the  prison 
he  could  find  no  comfort ;  falling  down,  grovelling  on  his  face, 
he  lay  sorrowing  on  the  floor,  in  deep  despair,  and  began  to 
weep  over  himself,  and  to  sing :  and  this  was  his  song." 

(S.  p.   2.) 

What  simple,  pure,  and  rhythmical  English,  as  formed 
and  lucid  as  the  English  of  Bunyan  or  of  Defoe  ! 

Another  bit  of  Alfred's  own,  and  what  is  so  rare  with 
him,  a  simile.  Philosophy  says  :  — 

"When  I  rise  aloft  with  these  my  servants  (i.e.  true  wis- 
dom and  various  skill)  we  look  down  upon  the  storms  of  this 
world,  even  as  the  eagle  does  when  he  soars  in  stormy  weather 
above  the  clouds  where  no  winds  can  harm  him."  (S.  p.  2.) 

Alfred  is  never  more  himself  than  when  musing  on 
his  royal  office  :  — 

"  Power  is  never  a  good  thing,  save  its  possessor  be  good, 
for,  when  power  is  beneficent,  this  is  due  to  the  man  who 
wields  it.  Ye  need  not  take  thought  for  power  nor  endeavour 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  9f 

after  it,  for  if  ye  are  only  wise  and  good  it  will  follow  you, 
even  though  ye  seek  it  not."  (S.  p.  35.) 

What  a  magnificent  Te  Deum  is  this  ! 

"  One  Creator  there  is  without  any  doubt,  and  He  is  the 
ruler  of  heaven  and  earth  and  of  all  creatures,  visible  and  in- 
visible, even  God  Almighty.  Him  serve  all  things  that  serve, 
they  that  know  Him  and  they  that  know  Him  not,  they  that 
know  they  are  serving  Him  and  they  that  know  it  not.  He 
hath  established  unchanging  habits  and  natures  and  likewise 
natural  concord  among  all  His  creatures,  even  as  He  hath 
willed,  and  for  as  long  as  He  hath  willed;  and  they  shall 
remain  for  ever."  (S.  p.  50.) 

Hear  how  the  head  of  the  royal  house  of  Cerdic,  after 
some  four  centuries  of  kingly  descent,  speaks  of  nobil- 
ity of  birth  :  — 

"Lo!  all  men  had  the  like  beginning,  coming  from  one 
father  and  one  mother,  and  they  are  still  brought  forth  alike. 
Why  then  do  ye  men  pride  yourselves  above  others  without 
cause  for  your  high  birth,  seeing  ye  can  find  no  man  but  is 
high-born,  and  all  men  are  of  like  birth,  if  ye  will  but  bethink 
you  of  their  beginning  and  their  Creator  ?  True  high  birth 
is  of  the  mind,  not  of  the  flesh  ;  and  every  man  that  is  given 
over  to  vices  forsaketh  his  Creator,  and  his  origin,  and  his 
birth,  and  loseth  rank  till  he  fall  to  low  estate."  (S.  p.  75.) 

Alfred  takes  small  count  of  evil  rulers.     He  says  :  — 

"  We  see  them  seated  on  high  seats ;  bright  with  many 
kinds  of  raiment,  decked  with  belts  and  golden-hilted  swords 
and  war  dress  of  many  kinds.  .  .  .  But  if  thou  wert  to  strip 
off  his  robes  from  such  an  one,  and  take  away  his  company  of 
retainers,  then  thou  wouldst  see  that  he  is  no  more  than  any 


96  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

one  of  the  courtiers  who  minister  to  him,  if  it  be  not  some  one 
of  even  lower  degree."     (S.  p.  128.) 

When  we  reach  the  grand  prose  hymn  with  which 
the  book  closes,  I  can  find  nothing  more  nobly  ex- 
pressed in  the  thousand  years  of  English  literature  of 
which  Alfred  is  the  John  the  Baptist. 

"  To  God  all  is  present,  both  that  which  was  before  and 
that  which  is  now,  yea,  and  that  which  shall  be  after  us ; 
all  is  present  to  Him.  His  abundance  never  waxeth,  nor 
doth  it  ever  wane.  He  never  calleth  aught  to  mind,  for  He 
hath  forgotten  naught.  He  looketh  for  naught,  pondereth 
naught,  for  He  knoweth  all.  He  seeketh  nothing,  for  He 
hath  lost  nothing.  He  pursueth  no  creature,  for  none  may 
flee  from  him ;  nor  doth  He  dread  aught,  for  none  is  more 
mighty  than  He,  none  is  like  unto  Him.  He  is  ever  giving, 
yet  He  never  waneth  in  aught.  He  is  ever  Almighty,  for 
He  ever  willeth  good  and  never  evil.  He  needeth  nothing. 
He  is  ever  watching,  never  sleeping.  He  is  ever  equally 
beneficent.  He  is  ever  eternal,  for  the  time  never  was  when 
He  was  not,  nor  ever  shall  be.  ...  Pray  for  what  is  right 
and  needful  for  you,  for  He  will  not  deny  you.  Hate  evil, 
and  flee  from  it.  Love  virtue  and  follow  it.  Whatsoever 
ye  do  is  ever  done  before  the  Eternal  and  Almighty  God ;  He 
seeth  it  all,  and  all  He  judges  and  will  requite."  (S.  p.  174.) 

I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  judge  of  sacred  poetry ; 
but  I  almost  doubt  if  Dante,  or  A  Kempis,  or  Milton 
have  poured  forth  any  psalm  more  truly  in  a  devout 
spirit.  I  hold  it  to  be  in  the  way  of  pure  and  nervous 
English  as  fine  as  any  similar  outpouring  in  our 
language. 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  97 

I  do  not  touch  on  the  difficult  points  in  the  Alfred 
manuscripts.  These  technicalities  I  leave  to  the  ex- 
perts. But  I  think  the  "  experts  "  have  been  too  posi- 
tive in  rejecting  pieces  on  some  very  slight  suggestion 
in  orthography  and  dialect.  From  the  literary  point  of 
view,  I  see  no  reason  to  deny  the  authenticity  of  the 
simple  Proem,  and  still  less  of  the  noble  Prayer  which 
ends  the  Consolations.  Both  are  to  my  mind  instinct 
with  the  mother-wit,  primeval  simplicity,  and  God- 
fearing soul  of  the  purest  of  kings,  and  the  most 
spiritual  of  warriors  and  statesmen. 

Nor  need  we  discuss  at  length  the  vexed  problem 
of  the  authenticity  of  the  alliterative  verses  translating 
the  poetry  of  Boethius,  which  are  appended  to  the 
Cotton  (Otho  A.  vi)  manuscript.  This  has  been  treated 
mainly  as  a  question  of  paleography  and  dialect ;  and 
the  experts  are  divided  and  doubtful.  I  see  no  reason 
to  doubt  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  and 
of  Mr.  Sedgefield,  that  no  good  ground  has  yet  been 
given  to  doubt  that  Alfred  wrote  the  verse  as  well  as 
the  prose.  The  Proemy  which  I  hold  to  be  Alfred's 
dictation,  distinctly  says  that  after  he  had  "  turned 
the  book  from  Latin  into  English  prose  he  wrought 
it  up  once  more  into  verse."  The  verse  is  not  alto- 
gether poetry ;  it  cannot  compare  with  Beowulf  and 
Caedmon.  But  to  my  ear  it  has  the  ring  of  Alfred's 
manly  and  native  voice. 

I  will  go  on  to  say  that  even  as  verse  these  pieces 
do  not  seem  to  me  quite  so  poor.  Alfred,  like  many 
of  us  who  love  poetry,  cannot  compose  poetry.  And 


98  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

we  do  know  some  enthusiasts  who  persist  in  writing 
verses,  when  they  know  (or  ought  to  know)  that  they 
cannot  compose  poetry.  Alfred's  verses  seem  to  me 
the  kind  of  lines  that  a  great  prose-writer,  one  who 
loved  and  studied  poetry,  but  was  not  a  born  poet, 
might  indite  to  occupy  his  hours  of  meditation.  I 
confess  I  think  there  is  a  good  ring  in  these  lines :  — 
"  Over  Jove's  mountain  came  many  a  Goth 

Gorged  with  glory,  greedy  to  wrestle 

In  fight  with  foemen.  The  banner  flashing 

Fluttered  on  the  staff.  Freely  the  heroes 

All  Italy  over  were  eager  to  roam. 

The  wielders  of  bucklers,  bearing  onward 

Even  to  Jove's  mount  far  on  to  ocean 

Where  in  mid  sea-streams  Sicily  lieth, 

That  mighty  island,  far  famed  of  lands." 

(S.p.  178.) 

Here  is  the  metrical  alliterative  version  of  the  grand 
prayer  —  O  stelliferi  conditor  Orbis  —  of  which  we  have 
just  had  the  prose  version:  — 

"  O  Thou  Creator  of  bright  constellations, 

Of  heaven  and  of  earth  ;     Thou  on  thy  high-seat 
Reignest  eternal  —  Thou  the  round  heaven 

All  swiftly  rollest  Thou  by  thy  holy  might 

The  lights  of  heaven  causest  to  hear  Thee." 

(S.  p.  182.) 

I  will  not  say  that  this  is  poetry  ;  but  it  is,  I  think, 
as  good  as  Sternhold  and  Hopkins's  Psalms  of  David. 

Here  is  a  bit  which  has  a  touch  of  imagination  in  it 
—  not  entirely  that  of  Boethius.  The  verse  is  more 
vivid :  — 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  99 

"  Feather- wings  have  I  fleeter  than  a  bird's 

With  which  I  may  fly  far  from  the  earth 

Over  the  high  roof  of  the  heaven  above  us ; 

But  oh  !  that  I  might  thy  mind  furnish, 

Thy  inmost  wit,  with  these  my  wings, 

Until  thou  mightest  on  this  world  of  mortals, 

On  all  that  there  liveth  look  down  from  on  high." 

(S.  p.  222.) 

Before  I  close,  I  will  remind  you  of  the  judgment 
passed  on  Alfred's  books  by  the  accomplished  histo- 
rian of  English  literature — Mr.  Stopford  Brooke. 
"  He  was,"  he  says,  "  the  creator  and  then  the  father 
of  English  prose  literature."  His  books  "were  the 
origin  of  English  prose."  The  personal  element,  as  he 
adds,  stands  forth  clear  in  all  his  literary  work.  Mr. 
Stopford  Brooke  does  not,  I  hold,  quite  do  justice  to 
Alfred's  literary  power  as  a  translator  when  he  says  he 
had  no  creative  power.  Was  not  the  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  English,  yea,  into  German,  perhaps  into 
Latin  also,  a  literary  masterpiece,  even  though  the 
translators  inserted  no  new  ideas  of  their  own,  or 
rather  did  not  do  so  of  malice  aforethought  ?  A  great 
translation  is  a  masterpiece  ;  and  two  at  least  of  Alfred's 
books  are  masterpieces  in  translation.  But  Mr.  Stop- 
ford  Brooke  does  full  justice  to  Alfred's  style  as  a 
writer.  And  to  create  the  style  of  a  new  literature,  to 
found  the  prose  style  of  a  nation,  is  a  supreme  literary 
triumph.  Whether  Alfred  founded  English  prose  style, 
is  a  question  of  the  meaning  of  the  phrase.  Alfred, 
King  of  various  tribes,  then  dwelling  in  England,  com- 
posed in  the  vernacular  a  regular  prose  style  not  matched 


IOO  THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED 

by  any  prose  in  England  until  the  translators  of  the 
Psalms  and  Job,  and  in  quiet  force,  simplicity,  and 
purity  not  surpassed  until  the  age  of  Addison. 

We  all  know  the  often  quoted,  often  misquoted 
phrase  of  Buffon,  —  le  style  est  rhomme  meme.  Of  no 
one  could  this  be  said  more  truly  —  I  venture  to  say 
so  truly  —  as  of  Alfred.  The  whole  range  of  ancient 
and  modern  literature  contains  nothing  more  genuine, 
more  natural,  more  pellucid.  He  is  not  composing  a 
book  to  be  studied,  admired,  or  criticised.  He  is  bar- 
ing his  whole  soul  to  us.  He  speaks  as  one  on  his 
knees,  in  the  silence  of  his  own  chamber,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  his  God,  who  is  pouring  forth  his  inmost 
thoughts,  hopes,  and  sorrows  to  the  all-seeing  eye, 
which  knoweth  the  secrets  of  every  heart,  from  whom 
nothing  is  hidden  or  unknown.  And  as  he  opens  to 
us  his  own  soul,  as  freely  as  he  would  bare  it  to  his 
Maker,  we  look  down  into  one  of  the  purest,  truest, 
bravest  hearts  that  ever  beat  within  a  human  frame. 

And  by  virtue  of  his  noble  simplicity  of  nature,  this 
warrior,  this  ruler,  this  hero  achieved  a  literary  feat ;  for 
he  created  a  prose  style  five  centuries  before  Chaucer, 
seven  centuries  before  Shakespeare  or  Bacon,  eight 
centuries  before  Addison  or  Defoe,  and  the  full  mastery 
of  simple  English  prose.  This  in  itself  is  a  fact  pecul- 
iarly rare  in  the  history  of  any  literature,  where  prose 
comes  so  much  later  than  poetry.  It  can  only  be  ex- 
plained by  remembering  that  the  language  which  Alfred 
spoke  and  wrote  was  not  exactly  early  English,  nor 
middle  English,  much  less  that  highly  composite  and 


THE    WRITINGS    OF    KING    ALFRED  IOI 

tessellated  mosaic  we  call  the  latest  and  contemporary 
English.  It  was  but  the  bony  skeleton  of  our  Eng- 
lish, what  the  Palatine  mount  of  Romulus  was  to  im- 
perial Rome,  what  Wessex  was  to  the  present  empire 
of  the  King.  But  it  was  the  bones  of  our  common 
tongue ;  it  was  the  bones  with  the  marrow  in  them, 

D  '  ' 

ready  to  be  clothed  in  flesh  and  equipped  with  sinews 
and  nerves.  But  this  simple  and  unsophisticated 
tongue  the  genius  of  our  Saxon  hero  so  used  and 
moulded  that  he  founded  a  prose  style,  and  taught  the 
English  race  to  trust  to  their  own  mother-tongue  from 
the  first ;  to  be  proud  of  it,  to  cultivate  it,  to  record  in 
it  the  deeds  of  their  ancestors,  and  to  hand  it  on  as  a 
national  possession  to  their  children.  To  this  it  is  due 
(as  Professor  Earle  so  truly  says)  that  "  we  alone  of  all 
European  nations  have  a  fine  vernacular  literature  in 
the  ninth  and  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,"  so  that 
neither  the  French  immigration,  nor  any  other  immi- 
gration has  ever  been  able  to  swamp  our  English  lan- 
guage. And  when  I  say  We^  I  do  not  mean  Britons. 
I  mean  You  of  the  Western  Continent  as  much  as  us 
in  the  British  islands.  Alfred  was  as  much  your 
teacher,  your  ancestor,  your  hero,  as  he  was  ours.  He 
spoke  that  tongue,  he  founded  that  literature,  which  is 
imperishable  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  which  is  one 
of  the  chief  glories  of  the  human  race,  which  the  three 
corners  of  the  world  shall  never  be  able  to  swamp  by 
any  immigration  of  any  foreign  speech  — whilst  we  who 
are  set  to  guard  our  common  tongue,  in  the  words  of 
our  great  poet,  to  ourselves  do  rest  but  true. 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


The   Dutch   Republic 

ADDRESS  AT  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE,   NEW  YORK,  MARCH,  1901 

SINCE  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages  four  great  peo- 
ples have  succeeded  in  winning  their  freedom  from 
civil  and  religious  oppression,  and  have  founded 
powerful  and  independent  republics  at  the  cost  of 
their  blood  and  a  stormy  revolution.  These  four 
were  the  people  of  Holland  in  the  close  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  the  people  of  England  in  the  Civil 
Wars  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  the  people  of  the 
United  States  and  of  France  in  the  second  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  revolutions  of  the  Dutch 
and  the  Americans  were  primarily  directed  against 
foreign  oppression ;  those  of  England  and  France 
were  purely  national  uprisings  which  themselves 
ended  in  international  oppression.  All  four  revolu- 
tionary struggles,  though  separated  by  two  centuries 
in  time  and  by  two  hemispheres  in  space,  had  an  inti- 
mate filiation  of  ideas  with  each  other.  All  four,  in 
different  degrees,  were  at  once  both  spiritual  and  po- 
litical in  aim,  both  intellectual  and  material  in  origin ; 
and  all  four,  in  varying  ways,  tended  to  found  a  new 
conception  of  the  social  commonwealth. 

105 


106  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

I  am  now  to  speak  of  the  Dutch  Republic  —  the 
movement  which,  of  all  these  four,  was  the  earliest 
nearly  by  a  century,  founded  a  commonwealth  that 
had  far  the  longest  duration ;  it  was  the  movement 
which,  of  all  the  four,  called  forth  the  most  magnifi- 
cent display  of  heroism  and  endurance,  which  was 
victorious  over  the  most  terrific  odds,  which  was  (of 
the  European  movements,  at  any  rate)  the  one  least 
stained  by  anarchy,  crimes,  and  horrors ;  a  revolution 
which  was  organised  by  one  of  the  purest  heroes  in 
modern  history.  Of  all  the  chiefs  who  in  the  latter 
ages  have  led  a  free  people  against  their  oppressors  we 
can  count  only  Cromwell  and  Washington  as  worthy 
to  rank  in  genius  and  in  nobleness  with  William  the 
Silent,  Prince  of  Orange. 

Not  only  was  the  struggle  of  the  people  of  the 
Netherlands  far  the  earliest,  but  it  was  also  the  most 
desperate  and  the  most  prolonged.  Its  first  and  most 
terrible  bout  was  continued  for  some  forty-two  years 
from  1567  to  1609,  and  after  an  interval  of  twelve 
years  it  was  again  renewed  from  1621  to  1648  —  hav- 
ing been,  with  intervals,  a  war  to  the  knife  for  more 
than  eighty  years.  It  was  waged  by  a  small  and 
divided  people  against  the  most  powerful  monarch  in 
Christendom,  who  hurled  on  them  the  most  warlike 
soldiery  in  Europe,  led  by  some  of  the  most  famous 
captains  in  modern  history,  and  directed  by  some  of 
the  subtlest  politicians  of  an  age  of  experienced  and 
sagacious  statesmen.  The  petty  province,  hardly 
larger  than  a  great  English  county,  and  not  so  popu- 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  IOy 

lous,  was  for  three  generations  assailed  by  all  that  war, 
famine,  pillage,  fire,  torture,  persecution,  and  inunda- 
tion could  do.  It  was  deluged  in  turn  with  blood  and 
with  the  salt  sea — ruined  first  by  exactions,  then  by 
confiscation,  waste,  destruction,  and  conflagration.  And 
yet,  after  forty  years  of  frightful  suffering  and  heroic 
endurance  in  which  old  and  young,  men,  women,  and 
children,  took  equal  share,  the  Dutch  Republicans 
broke  the  power  of  Spain  and  swept  her  from  their 
seas  ;  and,  after  the  second  war  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  States,  by  the  Treaty  of  Munster  (1648), 
humbled  Spain  in  the  dust,  and  were  recognised  as  one 
of  the  greatest,  richest,  most  aspiring  Powers  in  Europe. 

There  is  an  often-quoted  passage  in  a  fine  book  — 
Vokaire's  Essai  sur  les  Mceurs  —  which  is  so  brilliant 
and  yet  so  truthful  a  summary  of  this  great  struggle, 
that  I  shall  venture  to  quote  it  once  more. 

He  says :  — 

"  When  we  study  the  rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  a  state 
once  hardly  known,  but  one  that  in  a  brief  space  rose  to  a 
great  height,  we  are  struck  by  the  fact  that  it  was  formed 
without  design,  and  contrary  to  all  that  could  have  been 
expected.  The  revolution  was  begun  by  large  and  wealthy 
provinces  of  the  mainland  —  Brabant,  Flanders,  and  Hainault, 
—  yet  they  did  not  shake  off  the  tyrant.  But  a  small  corner 
of  land,  itself  almost  drowned  by  the  sea,  which  subsisted  only 
by  its  herring  fishery,  rose  to  be  a  formidable  Power,  held  its 
own  against  Philip  II,  despoiled  his  successors  of  almost  all 
their  possessions  in  the  East  Indies  —  and  ended  by  becoming 
their  patrons  and  protectors." 


IO8  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

This  eloquent  passage  is  a  truthful  picture  of  the 
great  struggle  which  lasted  with  the  interval  I  have 
stated  for  more  than  eighty  years.  I  might  occupy 
an  evening  in  attempting  to  give  you  the  history  of 
any  single  one  of  these  eighty  years,  and  not  one  of 
them  is  wanting  in  thrilling  interest.  But  my  subject 
is  simply  the  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic ;  and  I  shall 
understand  by  that  the  period  comprised  in  Motley's 
work  of  this  title  which  covers  the  twenty  years  or  so 
from  the  beginning  of  the  movement  until  the  murder 
of  the  Prince  of  Orange  in  1584.  And  I  need  hardly 
say  that  I  can  attempt  to  give  you  not  the  events  of 
these  crowded  twenty  years,  but  the  main  conclusions 
and  problems.  My  subject,  in  fact,  centres  round  the 
later  life  of  "  Father  William,"  the  founder  of  Dutch 
freedom  and  Dutch  Protestantism. 

To  make  my  remarks  intelligible,  I  will  begin  by  a 
very  brief  outline  of  the  principal  events  in  the  five 
and  twenty  years  from  1559  to  1584.  In  1506, 
Charles  V  of  Spain,  afterward  the  Emperor,  succeeded 
to  the  inheritance  of  his  ancestors,  the  Dukes  of 
Burgundy  —  of  all  his  vast  possessions  in  the  old  and 
new  world,  the  most  thriving  and  industrious  part. 
His  famous  abdication  at  Brussels  in  1555  made  his 
son,  Philip  II,  King  of  Spain  and  Duke  of  Brabant, 
though  of  course  not  emperor  as  the  empire  was 
elective.  For  some  four  years  Philip  remained  in  the 
Provinces,  carrying  on  a  successful  war  with  France, 
and  vainly  striving  to  crush  the  free  burghers  of  the 
Low  Countries  into  Spanish  servitude  and  Catholic 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


109 


orthodoxy.  Recognising  his  impotence,  the  sanguin- 
ary bigot  withdrew  to  Spain  to  superintend  auto-da- fes, 
furiously  inveighing  against  the  stubbornness  of  the 
Netherlands,  and  the  machinations  of  their  leader,  the 
Prince  of  Orange.  He  was  secretly  planning  a  terrific 
vengeance  and  wholesale  persecution. 

After  six  years  of  veiled  rebellion  by  the  Flemings 
and  irresolute  oppression  by  the  King's  viceroys,  Philip 
resolved  to  carry  out  the  decrees  of  the  Council  of 
Trent,  by  all  the  horrors  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition, 
and  shortly  afterward  armed  insurrection  begins.  The 
monster  Alva,  one  of  the  most  consummate  soldierjs 
of  his  age,  and  a  tyrant  only  second  in  ferocity  and 
craft  to  Philip  himself,  was  sent  to  the  Provinces  with  a 
magnificent  army  of  twenty  thousand  men, —  Spanish, 
Italian  and  German.  William  withdraws  before  the 
storm  into  his  ancestral  countship  of  Nassau  ;  Egmont 
and  Horn  are  seized  and  executed ;  the  Blood-Tri- 
bunal was  set  up ;  and  a  reign  of  terror  by  stake,  axe, 
torture,  fire  and  sword  was  established.  For  six  years 
this  raged  unchecked.  Eighteen  thousand  persons 
were  put  to  death  for  religion  ;  and  twice  or  thrice  that 
number  were  destroyed  in  battle,  in  sieges,  or  in  gen- 
eral massacres.  The  armies  of  Alva  and  Alexander  of 
Parma  swept  away  the  untrained  burghers  of  Flanders 
and  Holland,  or  the  mutinous  mercenaries  whom  the 
Nassaus  hired  in  Germany.  The  patriot  armies  were 
massacred  like  sheep,  city  after  city  was  stormed,  and  no 
sooner  stormed  but  sacked  with  every  form  of  ferocity, 
greed,  and  lust,  and  the  whole  population  put  to  the 


IIO  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

sword.  Still  they  would  not  submit,  and  a  new  turn  was 
given  to  the  struggle  by  the  Dutch  of  the  Northern 
Provinces  taking  to  the  sea  —  "  Water- Beggars,"  as 
they  chose  to  call  themselves.  They  seized  Briel, 
Flushing,  and  other  ports  in  the  low  tide-swept  islands 
commanding  the  great  rivers  as  they  pour  into  the 
German  Ocean.  Louis  of  Nassau  attacked  the  Span- 
iards in  the  South  and  in  the  end  the  Dutch  asserted 
their  hold  on  the  provinces  we  now  call  Holland. 
Alva  was  succeeded  by  Requesens,  Don  John  of 
Austria,  and  Alexander  of  Parma,  the  last,  the  ablest 
soldier  of  them  all.  More  defeats  of  the  patriots 
followed,  more  cities  were  sacked  and  burnt,  more 
provinces  were  desolated,  and  tens  of  thousands  were 
massacred  in  cold  blood.  All  three  brothers  of  Will- 
iam fell  in  the  field ;  he  was  left  alone  of  all  the  nobles 
of  the  country  in  arms.  But  slowly  and  steadily  by 
sheer  force  of  suffering  and  stubborn  resistance,  the 
Northern  Provinces  which  we  now  call  Holland  won 
their  virtual  independence  —  in  the  grand  words  of 
the  Roman  poet:  — 

"  per  damna,  per  caedes,  ab  ipso 
ducit  opes  animumque  ferro." 

Though  defeated  in  every  battle  in  the  open  field, 
the  heroism  of  the  defenders  of  Alkmaar,  Haarlem, 
and  Leyden  equalled,  if  it  did  not  surpass,  the  martial 
prowess  of  the  Spanish  veterans.  For  a  moment  the 
whole  seventeen  provinces  —  we  may  call  them  roughly 
Holland  and  Belgium  —  were  united.  But  this 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  III 


hollow  union  lasted  but  a  few  months,  and  about  1577, 
after  some  ten  or  eleven  years  of  struggle  the  Northern 
Dutch  Provinces  were  separated  from  the  Southern 
Belgian  Provinces,  and  accepted  William  as  their 
chief.  Steadily  the  vast  power  and  military  resources 
of  Spain  recovered  the  Belgic  Catholic  population 
which  the  House  of  Hapsburg  retained  until  the  end 
of  the  last  century.  And  as  steadily  the  Dutch  Prov- 
inces of  the  North  grew  in  strength,  wealth,  and 
patriotic  energy.  The  union  of  Utrecht  united  the 
seven  Batavian  Provinces  in  1579,  just  twenty  years 
after  the  withdrawal  of  Philip,  twenty  years  of  frightful 
suffering  and  heroic  struggle.  The  Prince  of  Orange 
was  wisely,  firmly,  and  impartially  cementing  this 
Commonwealth  into  a  hardy  and  rising  State,  when  to 
the  horror  of  his  own  countrymen,  and  to  the  eternal 
shame  of  all  bigots  and  tyrants,  he  was  foully  murdered 
by  one  of  the  paid  assassins  commissioned  by  the  king 
of  Spain. 

This  tremendous  struggle  of  more  than  eighty  years 
never  would  have  been  possible  but  for  the  foresight, 
wisdom,  and  tenacity  of  William  the  Silent  who  may 
be  truly  said  to  have  founded  a  nation,  even  more  than 
Alfred  created  the  English  nation,  as  Washington 
created  the  United  States.  The  struggle  was  carried 
on  for  more  than  sixty  years  after  his  death  ;  but,  had 
it  not  been  for  the  desperate  efforts  he  directed  for  the 
first  twenty  years  before,  there  would  have  been  no 
struggle  at  all.  Philip  would  have  annihilated  the 
feeble  resistance  of  the  Netherlands,  divided  by  race, 


112  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

religion,  and  local  jealousies,  and  without  leaders, 
resources,  or  any  definite  policy.  William  of  Nassau 
and  his  family  supplied  leaders,  a  consistent  policy, 
vast  resources  in  money,  and  wide  relations  with  Ger- 
many, France,  and  England.  The  Netherlands  owed 
their  salvation  from  a  bloody  tyranny  to  the  heroic 
House  of  Nassau  —  and  in  a  peculiar  sense  to  the 
genius  and  indomitable  will  of  the  head  of  that  house, 
William,  Prince  of  Orange. 

He  had  been  trained  from  boyhood  by  Charles  V, 
the  Emperor,  who  regarded  him  as  his  adopted  son, 
and  the  future  mainstay  of  his  own  successor,  Philip  II. 
So  soon  as  the  Prince  fully  understood  the  nature  and 
designs  of  the  new  king  of  Spain,  he  quietly  but  reso- 
lutely set  himself  to  checkmate  them.  For  six  years, 
as  general  minister  and  counsellor  of  the  Spanish  gov- 
ernment in  the  Netherlands,  the  Prince  carried  on  a 
politic  but  outwardly  loyal  opposition  to  the  tyrant's 
project  of  stamping  out  the  new  religion  which,  from 
North  Germany,  Geneva,  and  England,  was  making 
rapid  progress,  and  of  suppressing  any  show  of  local 
independence  or  right  of  taxation  and  representation. 
The  efforts  of  William  the  Silent  —  who  ought  rather 
to  be  called  William  the  politic,  the  persuasive,  the 
affable  —  carried  on  the  same  work  as  did  Hampden, 
Pym,  and  Cromwell  in  the  early  days  of  the  contest 
with  Charles  I.  And  for  some  years  he  and  his  friends 
were  entirely  successful.  And  but  for  the  fanatical 
violence  of  the  Calvinists  and  their  revolutionary  out- 
breaks—  and  if  Philip  had  been  simply  Duke  of  Bra- 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


bant  and  Count  of  Holland,  residing  in  Netherlands, 
and  maintained  by  Flemish  arms  alone  —  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  William's  scheme  of  founding  a  consti- 
tutional monarchy  would  have  been  crowned  with  an 
early  and  ample  success. 

Two  things  brought  it  to  failure.  The  first  was  the 
furious  temper  of  the  Calvinist  fanatics,  and  the  fact 
that  Philip  was  king  of  Spain,  the  most  powerful 
monarch  in  Christendom,  in  command  of  boundless 
resources  and  the  most  brilliant  soldiery  known  to 
modern  history.  The  outbreak  at  Antwerp  wrecking 
the  noble  cathedral,  and  the  frenzy  which  carried  simi- 
lar outrages  upon  the  religion  of  the  State  and  of  the 
majority,  roused  the  Spanish  nation,  its  king  and  the 
soldiers  and  nobles  throughout  his  vast  dominions  to 
a  passionate  thirst  for  vengeance,  which  the  Church 
excited  to  a  white  heat.  Philip  organised  a  magnifi- 
cent army  of  some  twenty  thousand  veteran  troops, 
Spanish,  Italian,  and  German,  whom  he  despatched  to 
Brussels  to  crush  Protestantism  and  local  liberty  under 
the  terrible  Alva,  one  of  the  most  pitiless  and  unscru- 
pulous monsters  of  that  age  of  perfidy  and  blood. 
Before  this  overwhelming  power  the  Prince  withdrew 
to  his  native  Germany. 

He  withdrew  but  only  to  organise  a  desperate 
resistance. 

For  seventeen  years  he  carried  on  the  fight  with 
the  most  marvellous  energy,  resource,  and  stubborn- 
ness —  almost  always  defeated  in  the  open  field,  pour- 
ing out  the  wealth  of  himself  and  his  family  like 


114  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

water,  seeing  one  combination  after  another  break  up 
under  the  terror  inspired  by  the  Spanish  arms,  seeing 
one  ally  after  another  desert  him,  one  foreign  poten- 
tate after  another  play  him  false,  and  one  brother  after 
another  slaughtered  in  fight.  History  presents 
hardly  any  other  spectacle  of  dogged  determination 
under  incessant  failure  and  defeat,  and  such  versatility 
of  resource  in  devising  new  plans  after  every  failure 
and  in  organising  fresh  forces  as  each  in  succession  was 
crushed  or  wiped  out. 

The  marvellous  ingenuity  of  these  efforts  was 
equalled  only  by  the  inexhaustible  industry  with  which 
they  were  pursued.  Some  twenty  or  thirty  volumes 
of  very  close  print  now  reveal  to  us  the  endless 
schemes  that  for  twenty  years  the  Prince  projected  or 
matured.  A  mass  of  this  correspondence  exists  in 
Mss.  signed  by  William,  or  addressed  to  him.  He 
seems  to  have  spent  hours  almost  daily  in  dictating 
despatches  and  secret  instructions  on  every  conceiv- 
able point.  He  had  agents  all  over  Germany,  where 
his  brothers  and  relations  were  powerful  counts  and 
officials,  in  France,  all  over  the  Netherlands,  in  Eng- 
land, even  in  Rome,  and  in  the  palaces  of  Philip,  whose 
secret  despatches  were  copied  in  his  cabinet  and  sent 
off  to  the  Prince.  He  held  in  his  hand  for  twenty 
years  the  threads  of  numberless  negotiations,  plots, 
intrigues  in  many  countries ;  he  was  constantly  organ- 
ising new  levies,  fresh  campaigns,  or  local  risings. 
And  from  hour  to  hour  he  had  to  decide  a  mass  of 
details  as  to  war,  administration,  diplomacy,  religion, 
local  disputes  and  suspicions. 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  115 

It  is  in  vain  that  we  ask  from  William  the  Silent  — 
I  prefer  to  call  him  William  the  Politic  —  that  native 
veracity  of  soul,  that  absolute  transparency  and  recti- 
tude of  purpose  which  is  so  singularly  rare  in  states- 
men —  which  we  find  in  Alfred,  in  St.  Louis,  in 
George  Washington  —  but  perhaps  in  no  other  man 
in  supreme  rule.  Though  William  never  sank  to  the 
chicanery  and  mendacity  of  such  men  as  Louis  XI, 
or  Queen  Elizabeth,  or  Mazarin,  he  was  dark,  secret, 
and  double-tongued  even  as  at  times  were  Richelieu, 
Cromwell,  Frederick,  and  Bismarck.  He  was  no 
spotless  hero,  no  knight  of  romance,  no  mirror  of 
purity  and  truth.  He  was  brought  up  in  the  worst 
school  of  the  worst  age  of  Machiavellian  craft ;  and, 
though  infinitely  superior  to  the  political  schemers  of 
his  age,  he  is  no  model  of  honour  himself. 

His  true  greatness  was  in  his  essential  singleness  of 
purpose,  —  his  unselfish  devotion  to  a  people  which 
was  in  no  sense  his  own  by  birth,  —  in  his  resolute 
rejection  of  dignity,  power,  or  any  kind  of  personal 
gain,  in  his  abhorrence  of  persecution  and  intoler- 
ance, and  above  all  in  his  sublime  constancy  to  the 
cause  to  which  he  dedicated  his  life,  his  whole  earthly 
possessions,  his  peace,  his  family,  and  his  good  name, 
and  the  unconquerable  courage  by  which  he  held 
to  his  purpose  in  spite  of  incessant  defeat,  and  never 
for  an  instant  gave  way  to  despair,  though  racked 
with  disease,  deserted  by  all,  and  baffled  a  thousand 
times  in  the  long  struggle  by  what  looked  to  all  men 
an  overwhelming  power. 


Il6  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

This  heroic  struggle  of  the  Dutch  to  assert  freedom 
of  conscience  and  national  independence,  notwithstand- 
ing its  narrow  field,  and,  from  a  European  point  of 
view,  its  petty  scale,  exercised  a  decisive  influence  over 
the  whole  course  of  modern  history.  It  was  the  first 
example  in  modern  Europe  of  a  small  and  poor  coun- 
try throwing  off  the  weight  of  a  foreign  oppression 
and  founding  a  free  commonwealth  on  an  enduring 
basis.  Two  centuries  later  its  moral  influence  across 
the  Atlantic,  where  a  part  of  the  American  people 
were  then  of  Dutch  origin,  is  too  obvious  to  be 
enlarged  upon.  But  long  before  that,  Holland  had 
been  the  refuge  of  the  oppressed,  the  home  of  freedom 
of  thought,  of  Biblical  religion,  and  of  republican 
ideals.  Its  great  service  was  to  have  instituted  the 
duty  of  Toleration  —  in  the  spirit  so  nobly  begun  by 
William  the  Silent,  and  carried  on  by  Barneveldt  and 
De  Witt,  and  Grotius.  The  relations  of  the  Presby- 
terians of  our  own  land  with  the  Presbyterians  of 
Holland  were  long  and  close ;  and  many  a  victim  of 
Stuart,  Bourbon,  and  Papal  tyranny  found  an  asylum 
in  the  free  republic.  During  the  political  and  relig- 
ious persecutions  that  for  a  century  followed  the 
Revocation  of  the  edicts  of  Nantes  by  Louis  XIV, 
the  French  Protestants  and  Reformers  found  a  refuge 
in  Holland.  Descartes  and  Bayle  lived  and  worked 
in  Holland ;  and  most  of  the  unorthodox  books 
which  preceded  the  French  Revolution  profess  on 
their  title  page  to  be  published  in  Amsterdam.  Thus, 
if  the  Dutch  Republic  was  not  politically  associated 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  117 

with  the  Republic  in  France,  from  which  it  was  sepa- 
rated in  time  by  two  centuries,  so  directly  as  it  was 
associated  with  the  Commonwealth  in  England  and 
the  Independence  of  the  United  States,  its  intellectual 
and  moral  influence  as  a  type  of  freedom  of  conscience 
was  very  marked  and  decisive. 

The  Dutch  Republic  is  not  only  the  earliest 
example  in  modern  Europe  of  the  establishment  of 
a  free  commonwealth,  —  we  may  put  aside  some  petty 
cantons  in  mountain  strongholds  of  mediaeval  origin, 
—  but  it  has  had  the  longest  duration.  The  free  gov- 
ernment of  Holland  founded  by  William  the  Silent 
has  now  endured,  we  may  say,  for  upwards  of  three 
centuries.  It  is  true  that  his  descendants  for  long 
periods  held  the  hereditary  office  of  Stadtholders  ;  it 
is  true  that  the  Government  of  the  United  Provinces 
was  not  seldom  arbitrary  and  oppressive.  It  is  true 
that  Holland  has  been  now  for  eighty-eight  years 
formally  a  kingdom.  But  it  is  still  a  free  national 
government  as  completely  as  our  own.  Holland,  for 
the  317  years  since  the  murder  of  William  of  Orange, 
has  been  in  the  main  a  free,  independent,  and  thriving 
State ;  and  the  charming  young  Queen,  now  in  her 
twenty-first  year,  still  rules  the  land  created  and  saved 
by  her  great  ancestor. 

The  struggle  carried  on  by  the  people  of  Holland 
against  all  the  might  of  Spain  was  for  at  least  twenty 
years  one  of  the  most  wonderful  recorded  in  history. 
It  may  almost  be  compared  to  the  defence  of  Greece 
against  the  myriads  of  Xerxes  the  great  king.  Philip  II 


Il8  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

was  absolute  master  of  all  Spain,  of  the  Milanese,  of 
Naples  and  Sicily,  not  to  speak  of  his  boundless  pos- 
sessions in  the  Indies  from  which  streamed  in  for  him 
incredible  treasures  in  merchandise  and  gold.  For  the 
greater  part  of  the  struggle  he  held  in  stern  subjection 
the  great  cities  and  rich  provinces  of  Belgium.  His 
Spanish  infantry,  his  Italian  cavalry  and  engineers  were 
accounted  the  finest  in  the  world.  His  footmen  carried 
muskets,  an  arm  till  then  almost  unknown  in  Northern 
Europe.  His  generals  and  officers  of  every  rank  were 
consummate  soldiers ;  in  strategy,  in  tactics,  in  the 
melee,  alike  unsurpassed.  Such  captains  as  Alva,  Don 
John  of  Austria,  and  Alexander  of  Parma  were  men 
of  world-wide  experience  and  true  genius  for  war. 
Such  an  army  as  Alva  led  across  Europe  from  Italy 
to  Brussels  on  his  terrible  mission  was  an  army  per- 
fect in  every  respect  even  from  the  point  of  view  of 
modern  war,  —  exact  in  discipline,  duly  proportioned 
in  each  arm,  amply  equipped,  provided  with  officers 
of  highest  skill,  and  inspired  by  the  grand  munition 
of  all  armies,  unbounded  confidence  in  themselves  and 
their  leaders. 

In  spite  of  their  ferocious  conduct  in  the  storm  and 
their  horrible  duties  as  executioners,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  be  struck  with  wonder  at  the  heroism  of  the 
Spanish  infantry,  at  the  impetuous  valour  of  captains 
like  Don  Frederic,  Vitelli,  or  Mondragon,  who  marched 
his  men  at  night  for  miles  through  sea-water  up  to 
their  shoulders,  and  then  captured  a  fortress  as  they 
emerged  from  the  sea.  It  is  impossible  not  to  admire 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


the  genius  of  Alexander  Farnese,  who  in  an  hour  and 
a  half,  with  a  few  squadrons  of  cavalry  and  without 
loss,  annihilated  a  brave  army  of  twenty  thousand 
men.  Spain  supplied  the  tyrant  with  dauntless  war- 
riors ;  Italy  supplied  him  with  consummate  tacticians, 
administrators,  and  engineers;  Germany  and  the  Rhine- 
land  supplied  him  with  willing  mercenaries  and  soldiers 
of  fortune;  the  Indies  supplied  him  with  inexhaustible 
gold,  and  Rome  supplied  him  with  the  confiscations 
of  heretics  and  the  blessing  of  Heaven. 

See  the  vast  strength  of  the  Spanish  tyranny  ! 
Philip  had  not  been  three  years  on  the  throne  of  his 
father  when  he  succeeded  in  humbling  the  whole 
power  of  France  under  her  warlike  King  Henry  II,  by 
the  brilliant  victories  of  St.  Quentin  and  Gravelines. 
A  few  years  later  his  heroic  half-brother,  Don  John, 
destroyed  the  magnificent  navy  of  the  Turks  at  Le- 
panto.  And  toward  the  close  of  his  long  reign  he 
threatened  England  with  the  Armada  —  from  which 
imminent  peril  we  were  saved  by  the  skill  of  our  sea- 
dogs  and  by  a  portentous  tempest.  That  a  despot  of 
such  vast  resources,  such  splendid  armies  and  mighty 
fleets,  who  seemed  to  his  contemporaries,  at  least  for 
some  twenty  years,  to  overshadow  Europe  and  domi- 
nate the  Western  Continent,  should  have  been  defied, 
baffled,  outmanoeuvred,  and  eventually  beaten  by  a 
poor  and  petty  province,  half  of  it  salt  marsh,  inhab- 
ited by  an  unwarlike  race  of  fishermen,  and  having  no 
cities  but  a  dozen  or  so  of  small  towns,  —  this  is  a 
standing  marvel  of  history.  The  only  solution  of  the 


I2O  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


dilemma  is  the  invincible  power  of  courage,  tenacity, 
a  profound  belief  in  a  great  cause,  and  the  strength 
that  lies  in  a  man  who  is  at  once  a  hero  and  a  genius. 

The  siege  of  Haarlem,  which  for  seven  months  re- 
sisted a  splendid  army  of  Alva's,  equal  in  number  almost 
to  the  whole  population  of  the  town,  is  one  of  the 
great  sieges  in  all  history.  Alva  led  against  it  thirty 
thousand  of  his  veterans ;  the  garrison  was  never  more 
than  a  few  thousand,  with  some  hundreds  of  fighting 
women,  regularly  armed  under  the  command  of  a 
widow  lady  of  rank  and  good  reputation.  Twelve 
thousand  of  the  Spaniards  had  fallen,  after  discharging 
ten  thousand  cannon  shots  upon  the  town,  when 
starvation  compelled  the  surrender.  The  whole  gar- 
rison was  butchered,  and  Philip  thanked  God  and  the 
Pope. 

The  siege  of  Alkmaar  was  quite  as  heroic  and  hap- 
pily more  successful,  for  Alva  wrote  to  Philip,  "  I 
am  resolved  not  to  leave  a  single  creature  alive ;  the 
knife  shall  be  put  to  every  throat."  His  gentleness 
at  Haarlem,  he  said,  had  led  to  no  good  result !  At 
the  first  day's  assault  a  thousand  choice  Spanish  troops 
died  in  the  trenches ;  men,  women,  and  children  of 
the  besieged  fighting  on  the  ramparts  with  desperate 
fury.  Under  the  orders  of  Orange  the  dykes  were 
cut,  and  after  nearly  two  months  the  besiegers  with- 
drew in  despair. 

But  the  crowning  triumph  of  all  was  the  memorable 
defence  of  Leyden.  That  is  indeed  a  story  to  stir  the 
blood.  Leyden  is  a  town  on  the  old  Rhine,  between 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  121 

Tlie  Hague  and  Haarlem,  one  of  the  most  ancient  in 
Europe.  Its  memorable  siege  lasted,  with  a  short 
interval,  for  a  whole  year,  when  it  finally  overcame 
the  whole  power  of  Philip.  It  was  invested  with 
sixty-two  redoubts  manned  by  some  ten  thousand 
troops  under  tried  captains  of  Spain.  The  defenders 
were  only  the  civilian  burghers  and  a  few  irregular 
soldiers,  behind  imperfect  and  ancient  walls.  Their 
one  chance  was  in  William  of  Orange  who  was  pre- 
paring a  force  to  relieve  them,  and  who  adjured  them 
to  hold  out  for  three  months,  which  they  swore  to  do. 
"  As  long  as  there  is  a  living  man  left  in  the  country," 
they  said,  "  we  will  fight  for  our  liberty  and  our  reli- 
gion." The  city  being  by  June  strictly  invested,  the 
whole  population  was  placed  on  a  food  allowance. 
Sorties  and  fierce  combats  took  place  daily.  But  the 
only  chance  of  relief  lay  with  the  Prince  of  Orange 
who  was  entrenched  near  Delft,  some  twenty  miles  to 
the  south,  and  was  organising  a  fleet  of  small  ships 
and  barges.  All  prospect  of  meeting  the  Spanish 
armies  on  land  was  extinct.  Louis  and  Henry  of 
Nassau,  brothers  of  the  Prince,  had  but  recently  been 
defeated  and  killed  in  a  great  battle,  with  many  of 
their  friends  and  four  thousand  men,  and  the  last 
chance  of  fighting  the  Spaniards  in  the  open  had  been 
swept  away.  But  the  Prince,  who  had  now  lost  three 
brothers  in  the  struggle,  would  not  despair.  He  tried 
another  arm  of  defence  —  a  new  engine  of  war. 

To  understand  this  wonderful  siege  —  wherein   an 
inland  city  was  succoured  by  seamen  in  a  fleet,  and  a 


122  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

powerful  army  in  a  vast  entrenched  camp  was  driven 
off  by  discharging  on  them  the  sea  from  the  German 
Ocean,  we  must  have  in  our  minds  a  picture  of  the 
spot.  The  whole  country  for  fifty  miles  round  is  a 
huge  plain,  redeemed  from  the  sea  by  centuries  of 
labour,  and  lying  many  feet  below  the  level  of  high 
tide,  protected  by  vast  dykes  along  the  coast,  and  an 
intricate  network  of  minor  dykes  inland,  the  whole 
intersected  with  thousands  of  canals  and  smaller  chan- 
nels, with  sluices,  gates,  and  dams  innumerable.  In 
this  teeming  plain  rose,  a  few  feet  above  the  meadows, 
orchards,  and  woods,  the  graceful  old  city  of  Leyden, 
with  a  ruined  tower  on  an  artificial  mound,  by  tradition 
said  to  date  from  the  Romans  or  from  our  Saxon  Hen- 
gist.  The  city  was  itself  interlaced  with  canals  —  these 
were  covered  with  hundreds  of  bridges  of  stone  —  and 
was  protected  by  a  range  of  ancient  walls  having  huge 
gates  and  some  antiquated  towers  and  bastions. 

The  tremendous  scheme  of  defence  devised  by  the 
Prince,  with  the  full  assent  of  the  city  and  the  States, 
was  to  open  the  dykes  that  kept  back  the  sea,  flood  the 
land  for  leagues,  and  across  the  drowned  meadows,  vil- 
lages, and  harvests,  to  send  in  to  the  doomed  city  the 
flotilla  that  he  was  organising  with  arms  and  food.  It 
was  the  desperate  resort  of  desperate  men ;  for  it  meant 
the  ruin  of  their  homes  and  their  lands  for  a  genera- 
tion. But  they  chose  this  —  or  death  —  rather  than 
the  Inquisition  of  Spain. 

On  the  third  of  August  the  Prince  in  person  super- 
intended the  cutting  of  sixteen  dykes,  and,  waiting  for 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  123 

the  flood  to  rise,  he  had  two  hundred  vessels  laden 
with  provisions.  The  waters  rose  slowly ;  and  toward 
the  end  of  the  month  the  people  of  Leyden  sent  word 
that  they  were  near  to  dying  of  hunger.  "They  had 
held  out,"  they  said,  "for  two  months  with  food, 
according  to  promise,  and  then  for  another  month, 
without  food,  but  flesh  and  blood  could  stand  it  little 
more."  The  Prince  replied  that  the  dykes  were  cut 
and  he  was  coming.  But  he  was  suddenly  prostrated 
with  fever,  and  lay  in  bed  at  Rotterdam  in  danger  of 
death,  very  feeble,  and  almost  speechless,  but  still  dic- 
tating orders  and  sending  messengers  right  and  left. 

By  September  Admiral  Boisot,  his  chief  officer  at 
sea,  came  out  of  Zeeland  with  three  hundred  veteran 
sea-dogs, — wild,  fierce  men,  half  pirates,  who  were 
sworn  neither  to  give  nor  to  ask  for  quarter,  —  with 
inscriptions  in  their  caps,  "  Better  be  for  the  Turk 
than  for  the  Pope."  With  his  fierce  Zeelanders  and 
some  twenty-five  hundred  veteran  seamen  in  large 
barges  rowed  with  oars,  and  charged  with  cannon, 
arms,  and  provisions,  Boisot  pressed  on  across  the 
flooded  plain  to  within  five  miles  of  Leyden.  There 
he  was  stopped  by  a  huge  barrier  of  dykes,  whilst  the 
Spanish  army,  three  times  as  strong  as  his  own,  blocked 
the  road  between  the  dyke  and  the  invested  city.  By 
the  Prince's  order  the  seamen  assaulted  and  carried  the 
dyke  in  a  brilliant  night  attack,  and  at  once,  before  the 
eyes  of  the  enemy,  cut  a  channel  through  the  obstacle. 
Through  it  the  little  fleet  poured,  but  only  to  find  a 
second  dyke,  still  a  foot  above  the  water,  and  guarded 


124  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

by  Spaniards.  This,  too,  Boisot  carried  —  but  even 
then  he  found  himself  barred  by  overwhelming  num- 
bers of  the  enemy.  A  strong  east  wind  kept  back  the 
waters  of  the  ocean  and  reduced  the  flood,  so  that  the 
flotilla  was  aground.  But  gradually  the  besieging  army 
was  driven  to  narrower  limits,  and  the  villages  round 
occupied  and  burnt  by  the  seamen  so  as  to  give  no 
shelter  to  the  invaders. 

Orange  rose  from  his  sick-bed,  inspired  the  patriot 
army  to  fresh  efforts,  and  ordered  the  cutting  of  the 
last  dyke.  The  city  was  at  its  last  gasp.  All  they 
knew  of  relief  they  had  to  guess  from  the  roar  of  can- 
non and  the  blazing  of  villages  in  the  distant  country. 
Food  had  disappeared.  Dogs,  cats,  and  vermin  were 
thought  to  be  luxuries,  starving  creatures  scrambled 
for  offal  and  refuse  in  the  gutters.  Infants  dropped 
dead  from  the  dry  breasts  of  their  mothers,  whole 
families  were  found  lying  dead  in  a  house,  for  the 
plague  appeared,  and  from  six  thousand  to  eight  thou- 
sand died  of  it  out  of  a  population  of  fifty  thousand. 
Still,  men  and  women  exhorted  each  other  to  endure 
—  to  resist  the  Spaniard  and  his  priests  —  a  fate  more 
horrible  than  plague  or  famine.  Some  of  the  faint- 
hearted ones  did  reproach  the  heroic  burgomaster  for 
his  obstinacy,  and  placed  a  famished  corpse  against  his 
door,  as  a  mute  witness  to  his  cruelty.  "  Here  is  my 
sword,"  said  he,  "  take  it,  kill  me,  divide  me  up,  and 
eat  my  flesh  —  but  no  surrender  whilst  I  live." 

At  the  end  of  September  a  dove  flew  into  the  city 
with  a  message  from  Boisot ;  but  the  wind  remained 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  125 

east,  and  the  waters  began  to  abate.  But  on  the  first 
of  October  a  tremendous  gale  began  from  the  south- 
west, forcing  the  sea  over  the  plains,  filling  the  canals, 
and  carrying  the  fleet  forward.  Boisot  was  now  right 
up  to  the  entrenched  works  and  the  forts  of  the  Span- 
ish. Terrific  day  and  night  combats  ensued,  the  sea 
rising  steadily,  the  ships  gaining  ground,  and  the 
enemy  sullenly  retreating.  On  the  night  of  the  sec- 
ond of  October,  a  combined  assault  on  the  Spanish 
lines  was  made  by  Boisot  in  his  ships  and  by  the  men 
of  Leyden  in  sortie.  Caught  between  two  fires,  in  the 
confusion  of  a  pitch  dark  night,  in  the  flood  and  roar 
of  tempest,  and  stunned  by  the  crash  of  a  long  section 
of  the  city  wall  that  fell  in  the  darkness,  panic  seized 
the  enemy,  and  the  Spanish  general  drew  off  the  rem- 
nant of  his  splendid  army,  to  such  unflooded  cause- 
ways and  eminences  as  he  could  find  :  "  beaten,"  wrote 
the  proud  Spaniard,  "  not  by  the  enemy  but  by  the 
sea!"  This  time  Philip  did  not  thank  God  —  let  us 
hope  he  did  nothing  worse. 

On  the  morning  of  the  third  of  October,  a  day  ever 
memorable  in  the  annals  of  Holland,  —  in  the  annals 
of  heroism  and  patriotism,  —  Boisot  swept  into  the  city 
with  his  vessels,  and  the  famished  populations  swarmed 
along  the  quays,  the  seamen  throwing  them  bread  as 
they  rowed  up  the  canals.  The  Admiral  and  his  men, 
wild  Zeelanders  and  all,  burghers,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, poured  into  the  great  church  and  offered  up 
thanksgiving  and  sang  a  hymn.  A  message  was  sent 
to  the  Prince,  which  reached  him,  at  Delft,  also  in 


126  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

church.  He  had  it  read  to  the  congregation  after  the 
sermon,  —  should  we  all  of  us  have  had  patience  to  sit 
out  that  sermon,  with  news  of  life  and  death  to  our 
people  in  the  minister's  hand?  —  but  the  Dutch  are 
a  patient  and  long-suffering  race  !  The  Prince  set 
out  to  Leyden  where  he  was  received  with  enthusiasm. 
"  It  will  cost  Philip  half  his  kingdom  to  make  an  end 
of  us,"  he  had  said,  and  he  had  kept  his  word.  He 
offered,  in  the  name  of  the  States,  that  as  a  reward  for 
the  sufferings  and  gallantry  of  the  city,  they  might 
choose  a  remission  of  taxation  or  the  foundation  of  a 
University,  and  the  tradition  is  that  Leyden  chose  the 
seat  of  learning,  and  rejected  the  filthy  lucre.  Should 
we  to-day  be  capable  of  so  noble  a  devotion  to  learn- 
ing ?  But  I  believe  the  tradition  to  be  mythical,  and 
that  Leyden  was  duly  rewarded  by  a  remission  of 
taxes  and  also  honoured  by  a  seat  of  learning.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  the  illustrious  University  of  Leyden, 
the  school  of  so  many  great  teachers,  of  Grotius, 
Boerhaave,  and  a  crowd  of  men  of  science,  of  law,  of 
theology,  and  of  medicine,  down  to  our  day,  was 
founded  on  this  occasion,  and  is  thus  associated  with 
the  memorable  siege  —  one  of  the  most  splendid 
triumphs  of  freedom  and  of  constancy  in  the  roll  of 
history. 

This  tale  of  slaughter,  ferocity,  and  heroism  is  only 
an  incident  in  this  long  struggle.  There  were  scores 
of  sieges  hardly  less  terrible,  less  gallant,  though  none 
of  them  so  triumphant  for  the  patriots.  Whole  prov- 
inces were  desolated  with  fire  and  sword,  pillage  and 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  127 

flooding  ;  armies  were  painfully  mustered  and  equipped 
by  William  and  his  family,  friends,  and  colleagues  at 
the  sacrifice  of  their  entire  fortunes,  only  to  be  swept 
into  the  rivers  or  hacked  to  pieces  in  a  few  hours  by 
the  matchless  chivalry  of  Spain.  Yet  by  sheer  power 
to  suffer  and  to  endure,  slowly  the  Northern  sea- 
washed  districts  and  the  towns  therein,  which  stood  on 
piles  a  few  feet  above  the  waters  around,  won  a  pre- 
carious independence,  began  to  form  a  solid  confeder- 
acy, nay,  rose  into  flourishing  lands  and  even  wealthy 
cities.  How  was  it  done?  What  was  the  secret? 
"'Tis  dogged  as  does  it!"  —  says  an  old  navvy  in  a 
famous  story.  "Dogged"  —  it  was  —  and  also  the 
magical  resources  of  the  sea  by  those  who  love  the  sea 
and  know  how  to  use  the  sea  !  The  Southern,  Catho- 
lic, Belgian  Provinces  and  cities  after  incessant  turmoil 
and  bloodshed  fell  back  into  the  grasp  of  Spain  — 
step  by  step  the  Northern,  Protestant,  Dutch  Prov- 
inces and  cities  asserted  their  liberty  under  their 
"  Father  William." 

Let  us  try  to  picture  to  ourselves  this  "  Father 
William,"  and  see  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  If 
anyone  were  to  imagine  him  to  be  a  dark,  inscrutable, 
fanatical  Puritan,  —  a  sort  of  Calvinist  Richelieu  —  a 
Protestant  variety  of  Philip  II,  —  he  would  indeed  go 
wrong.  William  the  Silent,  the  chief  of  the  Dutch 
national  revolution,  the  head  of  the  Calvinistic  Re- 
formers of  Holland,  was  neither  taciturn  by  habit,  nor 
a  Dutchman  by  birth,  nor  a  revolutionist  in  policy, 
nor  an  advanced  reformer  in  religion.  He  was  a 


128  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

most  eloquent  speaker,  a  delightful  conversationalist, 
a  brilliant  man  of  the  world,  an  accomplished  linguist. 
He  was  by  birth  a  Count  of  the  Empire,  a  Nassauer, 
a  German,  of  pure  High  German  descent  for  long 
generations  both  by  his  father  and  his  mother. 
Though  Prince  of  Orange,  which  is  on  the  Rhone  in 
southeastern  France,  he  never  saw  Orange  in  his  life, 
and  had  little  more  to  do  with  it  than  our  Prince  of 
Wales  has  to  do  with  his  own  titular  principality. 
William,  Count  of  Nassau,  got  nothing  out  of  Orange, 
except  the  barren  honour  of  "  Prince,"  and  the  degrad- 
ing privilege  of  being  addressed  by  Philip  II  as  "my 
cousin."  His  princedom,  his  vast  estates  in  the  Low 
Countries,  and  his  connection  with  Holland,  he  owed 
to  accident  in  early  youth.  They  came  to  him  when 
a  boy  of  eleven,  in  the  lifetime  of  his  own  parents, 
under  the  will  of  his  cousin  Rene,  of  that  elder  branch 
of  the  Nassau  house,  settled  in  the  Netherlands. 
From  his  boyhood  William  was  thus  all  his  life  a 
sovereign  prince  ;  he  was  by  instinct  a  real  conserva- 
tive, a  moderate,  a  coalitionist  —  never  a  revolutionist. 
By  policy  he  was  an  opportunist,  always  prone  to 
take  half  a  loaf,  to  get  the  best  terms  to  be  had  at  the 
time,  to  make  the  most  workable  compromise  in  each 
case. 

His  precocious  apprenticeship  in  high  matters  of 
state  and  his  wonderful  insight  into  the  nature  of 
men  he  acquired  by  the  favour  of  that  consummate 
diplomatist,  the  Emperor  Charles  V,  who  made  the 
young  Prince  of  eleven  his  page,  gave  him  the  best 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 


education  of  the  age,  and  kept  him,  almost  as  an 
adopted  son,  about  his  own  person,  even  calling  him 
to  his  side  in  his  Cabinet  whilst  discussing  affairs  of 
moment.  For  nine  years  the  young  Prince  was  thus 
trained  by  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  statecraft  in 
an  age  of  profound  and  ambitious  politicians.  At  the 
age  of  eighteen,  William  was  given  in  marriage  by  the 
Emperor  to  Anne  of  Egmont,  one  of  the  greatest 
heiresses  of  the  Netherlands  ;  and  their  joint  posses- 
sions made  them  one  of  the  wealthiest  young  couples 
in  Northern  Europe.  The  young  soldier  was  shortly 
made  a  colonel  and  sent  off  to  fight  the  French.  He 
rose  in  the  service  ;  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  the 
Emperor,  himself  one  of  the  first  soldiers  of  his  age, 
made  the  young  hero  commander-in-chief  of  an  army 
of  twenty  thousand  men. 

For  some  ten  years  the  Prince  continued  to  serve 
the  Emperor,  his  son  Philip  II,  and  their  successive 
viceroys  in  military  and  civil  offices  of  the  first  rank. 
He  took  part  in  the  successful  wars  against  France 
that  opened  Philip's  reign,  though  he  does  not  appear 
to  have  done  more  than  prove  himself  a  consummate 
organiser  of  difficult  campaigns,  and  a  most  wary  and 
provident  commander.  It  was  when  leaning  on  the 
shoulder  of  his  beloved  Prince,  that  the  broken 
Emperor,  in  his  theatrical  scene  of  abdication,  came 
into  the  Hall  of  Nobles  to  abdicate  his  crown  into  the 
hands  of  his  own  son,  Philip.  The  dying  sovereign 
leaned  on  the  two  Princes,  his  adopted  and  his  natural 
son,  those  two  who  were  destined  to  wage  a  deadly 


130  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

war  against  each  other  for  nearly  thirty  years.  For 
some  years  the  Prince  and  his  young  bride  kept  royal 
state,  as  having  a  household  renowned  throughout 
Europe  for  its  splendid  hospitality,  its  brilliant  refine- 
ment, and  its  magnificent  courtesy.  The  Prince, 
wrote  a  bitter  Catholic,  has  the  most  winning  manners, 
the  sweetest  temper,  the  most  persuasive  tongue  in  the 
world.  He  leads  all  the  court  at  his  own  will,  and 
fascinates  all  he  approaches,  both  high  and  low.  He 
undertook  at  his  own  cost  splendid  embassies ;  he 
entertained  all  royal  guests  from  foreign  countries;  he 
raised  and  maintained  whole  regiments  in  the  field  at 
his  own  charges,  until  even  bis  vast  revenues  became 
encumbered  with  debt.  Down  to  the  age  of  thirty, 
William  of  Orange  was  in  fact  a  grandee  of  the  Span- 
ish Crown,  a  magnificent  Prince  in  four  countries 
which  are  now  France,  Germany,  Belgium,  and  Hol- 
land —  and  till  then  he  was  a  devoted  and  indeed  a 
loyal  servant  of  the  kings  of  Spain. 

But  he  soon  had  a  rude  awakening  from  this  pros- 
perous pageantry.  From  the  first  day  he  had  seen 
deep  into  the  black  heart  of  Philip,  and  though  he 
felt  in  duty  bound  to  serve  him  as  a  sovereign  in  the 
field  and  in  council,  he  held  him  in  deep  aversion 
and  distrust.  Orange  had  a  principal  hand  in  the 
negotiations  for  the  treaty  of  Cateau-Cambresis  by 
which  Philip  so  humbled  his  rival  of  France,  and  he 
was  sent  to  Paris  as  a  State  hostage  along  with  the 
Duke  of  Alva,  the  Prince's  future  foe,  and  Count  Eg- 
mont,  Alva's  future  victim.  There,  riding  one  day 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  13! 

in  a  hunting  expedition,  alone  beside  the  French  king, 
Henry  II,  supposing  the  Prince  to  be  deep  in  all  the 
counsels  of  Philip,  revealed  to  him  the  horrid  plot 
concocted  between  Alva  and  the  French  court  to  com- 
bine to  crush  out  the  Reformation  by  all  the  rigour  of 
the  Inquisition,  Philip  to  use  his  Spanish  troops  in 
the  Netherlands.  The  Prince  of  Orange  —  he  was 
still  only  twenty-six  —  never  moved  a  muscle,  but  full 
of  horror  as  he  was,  suffered  the  King  to  talk  on. 
"  I  was  deeply  moved  with  pity,"  he  wrote  twenty 
years  later,  "  for  all  the  worthy  people  who  were  thus 
devoted  to  slaughter,  and  for  the  country  to  which  I 
owed  so  much,  wherein  they  designed  to  introduce  an 
Inquisition  more  cruel  than  that  of  Spain.  From 
that  hour  I  resolved  with  my  whole  soul  to  drive  the 
Spanish  vermin  from  the  land."  He  hastened  to  get 
leave  of  absence,  returned  to  Brussels,  saw  some  of 
his  friends  and  warned  them  of  what  was  to  come.  It 
was  this  incident  which  gained  the  title  of  "the  Silent 
One"  for  a  man  who  was  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
talkers  and  one  of  the  most  affable  companions  of  his 
age. 

We  know  how  the  Prince  looked  at  this  time. 
There  exists  a  fine  portrait  of  him  painted  exactly  at 
this  age  —  a  replica  of  which  his  dascendant,  the  Ger- 
man Emperor,  has  recently  presented  to  his  own 
cousin,  the  young  Queen  of  the  Netherlands.  The 
Prince  is  in  full  armour  resting  his  left  hand  firmly 
on  his  helmet,  with  powerful  features,  an  open  brow, 
auburn  hair,  large  piercing  eyes,  a  very  firm,  strong 


132  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

jaw,  a  mouth  closely  set,  and  a  massive  chin.  The 
whole  aspect  is  one  of  intense  penetration,  firmness  of 
purpose,  and  even  then  of  deep  melancholy.  It  is 
pathetic  to  contrast  this  picture  of  his  resplendent 
youth  with  the  portraits  of  his  last  years  when,  an 
old  man  at  fifty-one,  he  was  bald,  worn  with  wrinkles 
and  furrowed  with  disease  and  anguish.  The  mouth 
seems  locked  with  iron,  and  the  deep  eyes  are  those 
of  a  man  at  bay  fighting  fiercely  for  life. 

In  religion,  as  in  all  things,  the  Prince  was  an 
opportunist,  willing,  in  an  age  of  a  wild  chaos  of  be- 
liefs and  the  clash  of  sects,  to  accept  the  best  working 
compromise  in  outward  communion,  whilst  quietly 
holding  his  own  beliefs  and  insisting  on  respect  for 
those  of  others.  He  was  a  man  of  deeply  religious 
feeling,  and  sincere  natural  piety,  sprung  of  a  religious 
family,  who  himself  brought  up  his  own  family  in 
practical  godliness.  But  he  seems  never  to  have  held 
to  any  dogmatic  creed  whatever.  And  in  an  age 
when  creeds  were  all  flung  together  into  a  melting 
pot,  and  when  each  sect  in  turn  was  doing  deeds  and 
uttering  maledictions  that  dishonoured  all  their  pro- 
fessions, William's  own  religious  adhesions  were  sin- 
gularly varied.  He  was  born  and  baptized  a  Lutheran, 
his  father  and  his  mother  being  convinced  Protestants. 
When  adopted  by  Charles  V  at  the  age  of  eleven,  he 
was  brought  up  a  Catholic,  and  he  remained  in  con- 
formity with  the  Catholic  Church  down  to  the  age  of 
thirty-four  and  his  withdrawal  into  Germany.  Then 
he  was  for  a  time  in  practical  communion  with  the 

i 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  133 

Lutherans ;  and  finally,  when  he  became  chief  of  the 
Northern  States,  and  Stadtholder  of  Holland  he  lived 
and  he  died  a  Calvinist. 

Throughout  his  life  he  had  a  loathing  for  the  perse- 
cuting temper  of  Catholicism  ;  Lutheranism  seemed 
to  him  always  to  have  too  much  of  the  aristocratic  and 
political  spirit ;  and  he  deeply  distrusted  the  fanatical 
zealotry  of  Dutch  Calvinism.  He  was  always  striving 
to  create  a  modus  vivendi  between  bitter  partisans.  As 
a  great  Catholic  official,  he  laboured  to  protect  the 
Reformers ;  as  Lutheran,  he  laboured  to  induce  them 
to  help  the  Calvinists ;  as  a  Calvinist  chief  himself,  he 
vehemently  resisted  their  unchristian  passion  against 
all  outside  their  own  sect.  William's  whole  life,  from 
the  day  when  he  listened  in  horror  to  the  infernal  plot 
of  the  two  kings  until  the  day  when  he  gasped  out  his 
last  words,  "  My  God,  have  pity  on  my  soul  and 
this  poor  people  !  "  his  whole  life  was  a  plea  for  toler- 
ation—  mutual  forbearance — Christian  unity. 

William  had  four  wives,  by  whom  he  had  thirteen 
children.  His  first  wife,  Anne  of  Egmont,  was  a 
Catholic,  and  she  died  young  before  the  great  struggle 
began.  His  second  wife,  Anne  of  Saxony,  a  Lutheran 
and  daughter  of  the  great  Lutheran  duke,  was  a 
violent  Protestant,  the  Prince  remaining  Catholic,  and 
baptizing  her  children  in  that  Church.  As  she 
plunged  into  vice  and  crime  he  repudiated  her.  She 
was  divorced,  tried  and  condemned  by  law,  and  died 
mad  in  prison.  His  third  wife,  whom  he  married 
whilst  the  second  was  alive  but  divorced,  was  a  Bour- 


134  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

bon  princess,  an  ex-abbess,  a  convert  to  Protestantism, 
and  a  refugee.  It  was  a  marriage  that  filled  the 
French  Court  and  the  Catholic  world  with  horror,  a 
desperately  imprudent  step  on  the  Prince's  part.  His 
fourth  wife,  Louise  de  Coligny,  daughter  of  the  heroic 
Admiral,  had  seen  her  father  and  her  husband  assassi- 
nated in  the  Saint  Bartholomew,  and  was  destined  to 
see  her  second  husband  also  assassinated  before  her 
eyes  by  the  same  ruthless  enemies. 

The  Prince  was  an  eminently  domestic  man,  almost 
excessively  uxorious,  a  second  father  to  his  widowed 
mother,  affectionate  to  his  wives,  loving  to  his  chil- 
dren, and  the  soul  of  kindness  and  courtesy  to  all 
within  his  household.  Of  the  thirteen  children,  but 
three  sons  grew  up  to  manhood.  The  eldest  was 
kidnapped  into  Spain  by  Philip  and  died  without 
issue.  The  second,  Maurice,  nobly  carried  on  for 
forty  years  and  completed  the  work  of  his  father.  The 
third  son,  Frederick  Henry,  was  born  in  the  year  of 
his  father's  death,  and  ultimately  succeeded  Maurice, 
as  Prince  of  Orange.  It  is  curious  to  note  how  many 
famous  rulers,  soldiers,  and  royal  persons  have  traced 
their  descent  to  William  of  Orange.  The  Princes  of 
Orange  first,  the  elective  or  hereditary  rulers  of 
Holland  from  his  day  until  ours,  during  more  than 
three  centuries  —  then  of  course  the  second  great 
Prince  of  Orange,  William  III  of  Holland  and  King 
of  England.  Through  daughters  come  the  royal 
family  of  Prussia,  Frederick  the  Great,  and  the  reign- 
ing Emperor,  the  Electress  Sophia  of  Hanover,  and 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  135 

of  course  all  our  Hanoverian  royal  family,  then  the 
Orleans  princes,  many  of  the  Italian  princes,  not  to 
speak  of  Prince  Rupert,  Marshal  Turenne,  Alexandra, 
Queen  of  England,  and  the  royal  family  of  Denmark 
and  the  Czar  of  Russia.  The  ancestors  of  William 
of  Nassau  were  illustrious  for  four  or  five  centuries  at 
his  birth.  But  his  descendants,  in  the  three  centuries 
since  his  death,  have  been  even  more  profusely  scat- 
tered upon  the  thrones  or  around  the  thrones  of 
Europe. 

Such  was  the  man  who  for  twenty  years  withstood 
the  machinations,  the  armies,  the  assassins  of  Philip  II 
—  never  despairing,  never  relaxing  his  vigilance,  never 
driven  into  crime  himself.  He  countermined  the 
conspiracies  of  Spain  by  his  own  foresight  and  his 
system  of  spies ;  after  every  defeat  he  raised  up  a  new 
army  ;  driven  out  of  one  stronghold,  he  raised  up 
another ;  after  every  act  of  treachery  and  disunion,  he 
set  himself  indefatigably  to  piece  together  a  fresh  com- 
bination. His  knowledge  of  men,  his  insight  into  all 
the  windings  of  the  subtlest  human  heart  was  intuitive  ; 
his  patience,  his  equanimity,  his  urbanity  were  never 
shaken  for  an  instant. 

In  the  long  struggle  the  Prince  was  deeply  changed 
within  and  without  from  the  chivalrous^  grandee  of  his 
youth.  His  enormous  revenues  had  all  been  confis- 
cated by  the  tyrant  or  sunk  in  war.  But  one  brother 
survived  ;  and  he  and  the  rest  of  the  family  had  ruined 
themselves  in  the  cause.  Father  William,  the  idol  of 
his  own  Hollanders,  looked  and  lived  like  the  simplest 


136  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

of  his  people.  A  fine  courtier  of  Elizabeth,  who  saw 
him  at  Delft  in  these  latter  days,  said  he  wore  a  thread- 
bare old  gown  that  a  poor  student  would  have  been 
ashamed  of,  and  through  it  could  be  seen  for  waistcoat 
a  rough  bargee's  jersey,  and  his  company  was  that  of 
the  citizens  of  that  beery  town.  No  external  sign  of 
his  degree  could  be  seen,  but  on  conversing  with  him, 
the  dainty  courtier  remarks,  "  there  was  an  outward 
passage  of  inward  greatness." 

It  would  have  been  strange  if  there  had  not  been 
something  to  mark  the  greatest  man  of  his  century. 
His  later  life  was  one  of  endless  toil  and  hardship  and 
often  of  real  penury.  When  Louise  de  Coligny  came 
to  be  married  from  France,  where  she  had  known  the 
most  brilliant  Court  in  Europe,  the  Prince  of  Orange 
sent  to  bring  his  bride  an  open  country  cart,  in  which 
she  had  to  sit  on  a  hard  board  and  was  cruelly  jolted. 
The  States  assigned  to  him  a  small  sequestered  convent, 
and  there  he  kept  a  simple  and  almost  open  house, 
absorbed  in  work,  and  accessible  to  all.  The  spot 
still  stands  unchanged.  It  is  now  a  national  memorial 
and  museum,  and  was  the  scene  of  the  last  tragedy. 

The  monster  Philip,  finding  all  his  efforts  to  crush 
the  Prince  in  vain,  issued,  in  1580,  by  the  advice  of 
Cardinal  Granvelle,  his  ban  whereby  he  declared 
Orange  the  enemy  of  the  human  race  —  offered  a 
reward  of  twenty  thousand  golden  crowns  for  his  head, 
and  promised  his  assassin  full  pardon,  and  a  patent  of 
nobility  for  himself  and  his  family.  From  that  hour 
William  was  hunted  by  murderers.  One,  Jaureguy, 


THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC  137 

succeeded  in  sending  a  bullet  through  his  cheek  and 
palate,  severing  an  artery  in  the  neck.  His  life  was 
saved  by  a  miracle,  but  his  third  wife  died  of  the 
shock.  William's  only  care  was  to  call  out  to  spare 
the  assassin,  and  from  his  sick-bed  he  saved  the  accom- 
plices from  torture.  We  know  of  some  five  or  six 
conspiracies,  and  doubtless  there  were  as  many  more 
we  do  not  know  of.  William,  like  Elizabeth  of  Eng- 
land, lived  for  four  years  surrounded  by  assassins  ;  but, 
alas  !  he  had  no  Burleigh,  no  Walsingham  to  protect 
him. 

The  end  —  the  inevitable  end  —  came  at  last.  Will- 
iam was  at  table  with  his  family  and  a  friend  or  two 
in  the  Hall  of  the  Prinzenhof  at  Delft,  the  old  con- 
vent. He  passed  out  to  his  cabinet,  and  in  the  dark 
corner  of  the  staircase  lay  concealed  a  small  fanatic  who 
shot  him  through  the  chest  point  blank.  The  Prince 
sank  into  the  arms  of  his  family,  gasping  out  the  words 
I  have  cited  before,  "  God  help  this  poor  people  ! " 
It  was  July,  1584.  He  still  was  but  fifty-one  —  in 
the  prime  of  his  powers. 

The  old  Prinzenhof,  a  convent  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, is  now  a  relic  of  Dutch  patriotism  —  a  place  of 
pilgrimage  to  their  people  and  all  who  love  the  cause 
of  liberty  and  conscience.  The  ]iall  where  the  hero 
lay  dying  is  now  filled  with  portraits,  arms,  views, 
engravings,  tapestries,  chairs,  and  tables  of  the  period, 
and  memorials  that  record  the  great  struggle.  They 
profess  to  have  kept  the  hole  in  the  wall  where  the 
fatal  bullet  struck.  That  murderous  shot  filled  with 


138  THE    DUTCH    REPUBLIC 

triumph  and  exultation  the  whole  Papal,  Jesuit,  tyran- 
nic world,  and  struck  indignation  and  dismay  into  the 
patriots,  and  all  friends  of  the  Protestant  and  national 
cause.  It  struck  them  with  dismay,  but  not  with 
despair.  The  people  of  Holland  and  Maurice  of  Nas- 
sau, his  son,  took  up  the  gage,  and  for  thirty  years 
more  successfully  carried  on  the  fight.  It  was  but  a 
year  or  two  ago  since  I  was  standing  in  the  dark  pas- 
sage where  the  bloody  deed  was  done.  And  then  I 
stood  in  the  ancient  church  beside  the  noble  tomb  of 
Father  William,  and  his  long  line  of  descendants, 
chiefs  of  Holland,  with  his  motto,  "  /  will  maintain 
piety  and  justice"  I  felt  how  deeply  the  three  centuries 
that  have  passed  have  taught  us  all  that  civilisation 
owes  to  the  founders  of  the  Dutch  nation,  and  to  their 
great  hero,  whose  name  and  fame  will  last,  I  believe 
and  trust,  for  thrice  three  centuries  to  come. 


RECENT   BIOGRAPHIES   OF   CROMWELL 


Recent    Biographies    of   Cromwell 

A  LECTURE  GIVEN  AT  PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 

THE  tercentenary  of  Cromwell's  birth,  which  oc- 
curred in  April,  1899,  aroused  fresh  interest  in  the  life 
of  the  great  Protector,  and  saw  the  official  acceptance 
of  his  memory  as  one  of  the  national  glories  of  Eng- 
land. Lord  Rosebery,  in  an  address  worthy  of  him- 
self and  of  the  occasion,  rehearsed  all  that  our  country 
owes  to  the  heroic  chief  of  our  Civil  War,  and  set  up 
at  Westminster  Hall  the  fine  bronze  statue  of  Crom- 
well, which  as  Prime  Minister  he  had  called  on  Parlia- 
ment to  vote.  This  is  one  of  the  most  impressive 
monuments  in  London  ;  and  it  is  a  curious  illustra- 
tion how  "  the  whirligig  of  time  brings  in  his  re- 
venges," that  the  effigy  of  the  republican  general  is 
finally  set  up,  after  so  long  a  struggle,  beside  the 
Palace  of  Westminster ;  almost  at  the  portal  of  the 
Parliament  House,  which  he  once  closed  and  so  often 
opened ;  hard  by  the  Hall  where  he  was  installed  as 
Protector ;  and  a  few  yards  from  the  tomb  in  which 
he  was  laid  by  the  nation  and  from  which  he  was  torn 
by  an  infamous  king. 

The  commemoration  also  very  naturally  gave  rise 
to  a  number  of  new  lives  and  memoirs  of  Oliver,  both 

141 


142  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

English  and  foreign  ;  which,  though  they  may  have 
established  nothing  new,  may  be  said  to  have  finally 
settled  the  true  place  of  Cromwell  in  the  history  of 
England.  We  have  had  no  less  than  three  works 
from  Mr.  Gardiner,  whose  whole  life  has  been  devoted 
to  the  history  of  this  age.  Mr.  Firth,  who  has  worked 
on  the  same  period  for  many  years,  published  last  year 
his  Oliver  Cromwell  and  the  Rule  of  the  Puritans  in  Eng- 
land. Then  Mr.  John  Morley,  in  the  same  year,  pub- 
lished his  most  fascinating  and  suggestive  estimate  of 
this  ever  memorable  time.  Dr.  Horton  and  Sir  Rich- 
ard Tangye  had  both  published  volumes  of  unqualified 
eulogy  from  the  point  of  view  of  modern  Protestant- 
ism. And  in  America  we  have  had  the  elaborate 
history  Cromwell  and  His  Times  by  Samuel  Harden 
Church,  and  the  spirited  study  by  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, Vice- President  of  the  United  States. 

These  various  estimates  differ  no  doubt  somewhat 
in  degree,  and  they  differ  much  more  in  literary  merit 
and  in  independent  research.  But  they  all,  from  vari- 
ous points  of  view,  come  to  the  same  result.  They  all 
reject  or  ignore  the  pure  Carlylean  gospel  of  the  su- 
preme Cromwell  —  an  almost  superhuman  and  quite 
infallible  being,  whom  to  doubt  was  blasphemy  and 
whom  to  thwart  was  sin.  And  they  all  agree  in  regard- 
ing Cromwell,  whatever  his  defects  and  his  errors,  as 
a  statesman  of  profound  genius  and  of  noble  character. 
Some  of  these  writers  are  more  severe  on  his  faults  and 
his  failures,  some  are  more  ready  to  blame  his  contem- 
poraries and  to  expatiate  on  his  difficulties.  But  in  the 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  143 

main  they  make  his  services  and  his  merits  far  out- 
weigh his  failures  and  his  shortcomings.  The  tercen- 
tenary commemoration  which  saw  him  installed  again 
at  Westminster  Hall  in  bronze,  has  seen  him  definitely 
enthroned  in  English  literature  with  a  chorus  of  honour 
—  <ere perennius  —  as  one  of  the  noblest  of  our  English 
heroes  and  one  of  the  chief  spirits  of  modern  civilisation. 

No  one  can  speak  of  biographies  of  Cromwell  with- 
out beginning  with  the  voluminous  works  of  Mr. 
Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner,  himself  one  of  the  descend- 
ants from  Oliver.  Seldom  in  English  literature  has 
any  student  devoted  himself  for  a  period  so  long  and 
with  such  indefatigable  zeal  to  master  every  shred  of 
written  or  printed  material  that  any  language  or  country 
retains,  and  to  weld  these  materials  into  the  annals  of 
a  single  epoch.  From  the  year  1603  down  to  the  year 
1656,  that  is,  from  the  accession  of  James  I  to  the 
third  year  of  Cromwell's  Protectorate,  we  now  have, 
in  seventeen  massive  volumes,  Mr.  Gardiner's  history 
of  England.  Few  periods  of  half  a  century  have  ever 
been  recorded  with  such  immense  learning  and  scrupu- 
lous completeness.  The  "  master  historian  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century,"  as  Mr.  Morley  has  named  him,  has 
raised  a  monument  of  erudition  of  which  the  only 
drawback  is  the  difficulty  it  presents  to  the  ordinary 
reader  to  find  his  way  through  so  vast  a  mass  of  re- 
search, and  the  consequent  loss  of  proportion  from  the 
multiplicity  of  detail. 

But  it  is  in  the  two  biographical  pieces  rather  than 
in  his  history  that  we  best  find  Mr.  Gardiner's  estimate 


144  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

of  the  Protector.  In  the  voluminous  history  we  so 
often  come  upon  the  sneers  and  insinuations  of  foreign 
diplomatists,  the  failure  of  some  scheme,  or  the  result  of 
some  error  of  judgment,  that  we  almost  begin  to  think 
of  Oliver  as  the  sport  of  circumstance,  and  the  vacil- 
lating leader  of  a  capricious  party.  When  Mr.  Gardi- 
ner has  to  sum  up  his  view  of  the  genius  and  character 
of  the  Protector  in  a  small  volume,  we  there  find  a 
larger  estimate  and  a  broader  standard.  Mr.  Gardiner, 
though  he  is  no  painter  of  character,  nor  master  of 
vivid  narrative,  has  an  eminently  judicial  mind.  And, 
when  he  is  delivering  judgment,  we  are  bound  to  re- 
cognise the  weight  of  his  words.  The  fine  monograph 
which  he  prepared  for  M.  Goupil's  splendid  quarto  is 
an  excellent  summary  of  Oliver's  career.  And  the 
sentences  in  which  he  closes  the  volume  may  be  taken 
as  the  general  verdict  of  posterity  :  — 

"The  limitations  on  his  nature  —  the  one-sidedness  of  his 
religious  zeal,  the  mistakes  of  his  policy  —  are  all  thrust  out 
of  sight,  and  the  nobility  of  his  motives,  the  strength  of  char- 
acter, the  breadth  of  his  intellect,  force  themselves  on  the 
minds  of  generations  for  which  the  objects  for  which  he  strove 
have  been  for  the  most  part  attained,  though  often  in  a  differ- 
ent fashion  from  that  in  which  he  placed  them  before  himself." 

The  six  Oxford  Lectures  entitled  Cromwell's  Place  in 
History  (1897)  give  us  a  much  more  critical  estimate. 
The  sixth  lecture  recapitulates  the  whole.  In  it  Mr. 
Gardiner  tries  to  draw  the  distinction  between  negative 
and  positive  acts.  "  His  negative  work  lasted,"  he 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  145 

says,  "  his  positive  work  vanished  away."  No  hard 
and  fast  line  can  be  drawn  between  negative  and  posi- 
tive acts  of  the  soldier  and  the  statesman  ;  and  it  is 
misleading  to  attempt  to  distinguish  negative  from 
positive  work.  The  French  Revolution,  the  cam- 
paign of  Waterloo,  the  defeat  of  the  Confederate  Re- 
bellion by  the  United  States,  were  peculiarly  negative, 
—  and  yet,  how  fruitful  in  positive  results  !  It  would 
be  a  paradox  to  say  that  Mirabeau,  Wellington,  and 
Grant  left  behind  them  no  positive  effects.  Finally, 
to  shatter  the  ancient  regime,  the  tyranny  of  imperial- 
ism, or  the  consolidation  of  slavery,  were  each  achieve- 
ments that  led  to  vast  and  enduring  changes  in  human 
societies.  The  task  of  Cromwell  was  of  this  order, 
and  its  negative  or  destructive  side  was  quite  as  lasting 
and  quite  as  much  charged  with  new  conditions  as  was 
that  of  these  men.  To  destroy  forever  an  effete  polit- 
ical and  social  system  is  practically  to  found  a  new 
system.  And  Cromwell  was  the  main  instrument  in 
destroying  the  effete  political  and  social  system  identi- 
fied with  feudalism,  the  Stuart  monarchy,  and  the  Laud- 
ian  church. 

The  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate  destroyed 
the  Old  Monarchy  and  the  Feudal  Constitution,  and 
opened  the  way  to  our  Liberal  Institutions.  Stuarts, 
intolerance,  and  corruption  returned  for  a  brief  space, 
and  in  diminished  force.  England  at  the  accession  of 
Anne  was  wholly  transformed  from  what  England  had 
been  at  the  accession  of  Charles  I.  Monarchy,  peer- 
age, Parliament,  law,  justice,  toleration,  finance,  com- 


146  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

merce,  religion,  —  all  stood  on  a  new  footing.  This 
immense  transformation  was  not  effected  by  Cromwell ; 
but  without  him  it  would  have  been  impossible.  The 
Protectorate  was  followed  by  the  Restoration,  and 
most  of  its  direct  acts  of  State  were  annulled.  Crom- 
well strove  to  found  a  presidential  government,  like 
that  of  the  United  States,  rather  than  a  parliamentary 
government,  as  understood  by  the  Whigs.  Our  sub- 
sequent history  was  a  compromise,  and  much  of  it  was 
anti-Cromwellian.  But  it  was  Cromwell  who,  in  the 
evolution  of  the  English  nation,  made  our  subsequent 
history  possible. 

"  There  was  no  single  act  of  the  Protectorate  that 
was  not  swept  away  at  the  Restoration  without  hope 
of  revival,"  says  Mr.  Gardiner.  This  is  to  view  the 
career  of  Cromwell  from  too  close  a  point,  and  through 
too  small  a  lens.  Destructive  work,  in  statesmanship, 
provided  it  be  permanent,  is  ipso  facto  constructive,  if 
it  enables  the  new  system  to  form  and  grow.  Luther, 
Wickliffe,  Latimer,  were  destructives  in  theology,  as 
Voltaire,  Hume,  and  Kant  were  destructive  in  meta- 
physics ;  but  vast  constructions  have  been  built  on  the 
ground  they  cleared.  Alexander,  Julius  Cassar,  Charles 
the  Great,  William  the  Silent,  effected  memorable  works 
of  reconstruction.  Yet  the  institutions  laboriously 
founded  by  each  of  these  perished  with  them ;  and 
hardly  one  of  them  left  anything  absolutely  permanent 
behind  him,  unless  it  were  the  city  of  Alexandria,  the 
Julian  Calendar,  and  the  prestige  of  Charlemagne  and 
of  Orange.  William  the  Silent's  whole  career  was  one 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  147 

of  failure.  Yet,  after  three  centuries,  the  nation  he 
created  reveres  him  as  its  founder,  and  the  British 
Empire  is  now  righting,  in  the  Orange  Free  State,  the 
scanty  offshoot  of  that  nation. 

That  destructive  statesmanship  should  be  construc- 
tive in  result  requires  many  important  conditions. 
The  destruction  must  be  necessary  and  timely ;  it 
must  be  final ;  it  must  prepare  a  permanent  reconstruc- 
tion. The  Protectorate  fulfilled  all  these  conditions. 
Although  many  of  the  Protector's  schemes  and  ar- 
rangements disappeared  with  him  and  some  of  them 
before  him,  they  were  ultimately  succeeded  by  institu- 
tions of  a  similar  order  and  having  a  like  purpose, 
which  never  could  have  been  founded  at  all  had  not 
Cromwell's  reforms  and  experiments  preceded  them. 
Like  William  the  Silent,  Cromwell  failed  at  times  be- 
cause he  was  in  advance  of  his  age,  especially  in  the 
matter  of  religious  equality,  official  competence,  law 
reform,  and  the  proper  spheres  of  Parliament  and 
Executive.  Had  Cromwell  had  his  way  he  would 
have  made  the  political  system  of  England  akin  to 
that  of  the  United  States.  The  parliamentary  system 
of  government  was  not  established  in  England  for 
more  than  a  century  after  Cromwell's  time.  It  is  not 
at  all  clear  that  it  is  destined  to  endure  in  the  spirit  of 
Pitt,  Peel,  and  Gladstone ;  and  it  certainly  has  not 
been  an  unmixed  boon. 

It  is,  I  think,  a  signal  error  of  judgment  which  led 
Mr.  Gardiner  finally  to  pronounce  on  "  the  failure  of 
Cromwell's  ideas."  His  institutions  and  his  construe- 


148  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

tive  schemes  were  undoubtedly  recast.  But  his  ideas 
—  the  best  of  his  ideas  —  lived  and  developed.  Mr. 
Gardiner  himself  seems  to  feel  this  when  he  says 
"  that  many,  if  not  all,  the  experiments  of  the  Com- 
monwealth were  but  premature  anticipations  of  the 
legislation  of  the  nineteenth  century."  Surely,  this 
is  one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of  life,  that  ideas  had 
borne  fruit  after  two  centuries.  Mr.  Firth  states  a 
precisely  contrary  view  to  Mr.  Gardiner  when  he  says  : 
"  The  ideas  which  inspired  Cromwell's  policy  exerted 
a  lasting  influence  on  the  development  of  the  English 
state.  Thirty  years  after  his  death  the  religious  liberty 
for  which  he  fought  was  established  by  law."  "  No 
English  ruler  did  more  to  shape  the  future  of  the  land 
he  governed."  To  ignore  all  this,  as  Mr.  Gardiner 
does,  is  the  nemesis  of  devoting  a  lifetime  to  the 
.minute  study  of  a  single  half  century. 

Let  us  turn  to  the  wonderfully  interesting  and  sug- 
gestive volume  of  Mr.  John  Morley.  Its  unique  value 
consists  in  this,  that  Mr.  Morley  is  the  only  one  of 
the  biographers  of  Cromwell  who  is  himself  a  states- 
man and  has  served  the  State  in  critical  affairs  and  re- 
sponsible office.  He  is  a  man  who  has  had  to  deal 
with  some  of  the  very  problems  that  tried  Oliver's 
mind  —  both  ecclesiastical  and  temporal  —  parliamen- 
tary, educational,  and  Irish.  The  most  philosophical 
historians  have  ever  been  men  who  have  had  practical 
experience  of  government,  as  were  Thucydides,  Tacitus, 
Machiavelli,  Comines,  Bacon,  Clarendon,  Gibbon,  and 
Macaulay.  We  must  now  add  the  name  of  John 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  149 

Morley  to  that  of  the  statesmen  historians,  and  his 
book  to  the  list  of  the  philosophical  histories. 

His  volume  has  also  another  distinction,  almost 
equally  important,  that  of  rare  literary  art,  a  distinction 
which  he  shares  with  Carlyle  himself.  It  is  full  of 
subtle  suggestions  in  political  problems  and  of  weighty 
pronouncements  of  political  experience.  It  is  this 
which  distinguishes  the  book  from  that  of  Carlyle,  to 
whom  political  experience  was  a  sort  of  penal  servitude, 
who  solved  every  political  problem  with  a  Gargantuan 
trope  or  a  resonant  gibe.  Mr.  Morley 's  work  is  far 
wider  in  range  than  Mr.  Carlyle's,  who  paints  Crom- 
well as  a  being  such  as  Cassius  in  sarcasm  represented 
Julius : — • 

"  Why,  man,  he  doth  bestride  the  narrow  world 
Like  a  Colossus  ;  and  we  petty  men 
Walk  under  his  huge  legs,  and  peep  about 
To  find  ourselves  dishonourable  graves." 

When  Carlyle  has  to  mention  contemporary  soldiers 
or  politicians,  they  only  walk  under  the  huge  legs  of 
Oliver.  To  Mr.  Morley  they  are  all  very  real  and 
active  personages  in  the  great  drama.  He  gives  us, 
as  Clarendon  did,  a  gallery  of  portraits  of  the  men  of 
the  time. 

This  undoubtedly  lessens  the  effect  of  the  book 
viewed  simply  as  a  biography  or  portrait  of  Oliver. 
These  speaking  likenesses  of  warriors  and  politicians, 
this  lucid  unravelling  of  the  conflicting  forces  in  the 
great  melee  of  the  Civil  Wars,  somewhat  disturb  our 


I5O  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

contemplation  of  the  presiding  genius,  and  rather  dis- 
tract our  attention  from  his  directing  influence  and 
mastery.  The  book  is  entitled  simply,  Oliver  Crom- 
well, but  that  is  hardly  accurate  as  a  description.  It 
is  much  more  a  history  of  the  times  wherein  Oliver 
lived  and  worked  than  a  biography  of  the  man  himself. 
Or  rather,  since  five  hundred  pages  cannot  contain  the 
history  of  such  a  half  century,  it  is  a  series  of  brilliant 
appreciations  of  the  typical  events  and  men  of  the 
Civil  Wars,  Commonwealth,  and  Protectorate.  In 
such  chapters  as  II,  III,  and  IV,  Cromwell  is  very 
little  on  the  stage,  which  is  held  by  other  actors  of 
signal  power  and  interest.  We  gain  by  having  a  great 
variety  of  scenes  and  a  moving  catalogue  of  dramatis 
person*.  But  Cromwell  loses  by  being  presented 
amongst  men  who  claim  to  be  his  equals  and  some- 
times his  superiors,  and  by  not  being  at  all  consistently 
the  hero  of  the  piece.  And  this  doubtless  was  to 
some  extent  Mr.  Morley's  own  purpose  and  judgment. 
But  perhaps  the  effect  on  the  reader's  mind  may  go 
farther  than  he  designed. 

I  think  we  shall  not  be  wrong  in  assuming  Mr. 
Morley  to  estimate  Cromwell,  not  only  without  any  of 
Carlyle's  unmixed  adoration,  but  on  a  lower  plane 
than  Mr.  Firth,  and  also  perhaps  Mr.  Gardiner. 
Mr.  Morley  is  enough  of  a  philosopher  to  take  a 
warm  interest  in  Strafford,  so  much  so  that  the  drama 
opens  with  the  great  Minister  playing  some  such  part 
as  Satan  does  in  the  opening  of  Paradise  Lost.  "  He 
has  as  true  a  concern  for  order  and  the  public  service 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  151 

as  Pym  or  Oliver,"  says  Mr.  Morley.  Mr.  Morley 
has  a  saving  word  for  Laud,  and  will  not  allow  that  he 
was  either  the  simpleton  or  the  bigot  that  Macaulay 
pronounces  him  to  be.  But  of  all  the  men  who 
figure  in  that  great  parliamentary  crisis,  Mr.  Morley's 
favourite  is  —  and  most  justly  is  —  John  Pym.  In 
fact,  a  careless  reader,  who  took  up  the  book  in  haste, 
might  think  Pym  was  the  leading  spirit  of  the  rebellion. 
And  it  is  perhaps  true  that,  in  the  matter  of  sympathy, 
Mr.  Morley's  heart  goes  out  to  Pym  and  not  to 
Oliver. 

As  a  loyal  Cromwellian  myself,  I  am  not  content  with 
this  estimate,  which  seems  to  me  to  carry  the  reaction 
against  Carlyle's  idolatry  to  unjust  lengths.  As  Mr. 
Gardiner  is  inclined  to  minimise  the  permanent  results 
of  Cromwell's  career  by  keeping  his  eye  too  closely 
fixed  on  the  immediate  future  and  the  Restoration  of 
Charles,  so  Mr.  Morley  is  inclined  to  overemphasise 
Cromwell's  unconstitutional  policy,  owing  to  his  own 
excessive  respect  for  Parliament  and  parliamentary 
methods.  Mr.  Gladstone  once  told  me  that  he  did  not 
consider  Cromwell  so  great  a  man  as  the  late  Lord  Al- 
thorp,  who  was  Mr.  Gladstone's  ideal  of  a  successful 
leader  of  the  House  of  Commons.  Men  whose  lives 
are  passed  in  the  atmosphere  of  Parliament  imbibe  a  su- 
perstitious reverence  for  oratorical  battles  and  triumphs 
which  often  have  little  reference  to  the  real  history  of 
the  nation.  And  I  cannot  help  fancying  that  Mr. 
Morley  has  caught  something  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  dis- 
belief in  the  greatness  of  a  revolutionary  dictator  who 


152  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

was  far  from  being  a  parliamentary  success,  but  whose 
true  greatness  was  that  he  lived  in  a  higher  plane  than 
that  of  any  Parliament. 

The  "prologue"  to  Mr.  Morley's  book  (pp.  1-6) 
contains  some  of  the  finest  passages  that  even  Mr. 
Morley  has  added  to  English  literature,  and  not  a  few 
of  those  Tacitean  judgments  on  men  and  affairs  which 
are  his  peculiar  note.  And  in  the  "  epilogue  "  (pp. 
488-496)  we  have  again  more  of  these  eloquent 
phrases  and  verdicts.  I  cannot  wholly  assent  to  all  of 
these.  The  key-note  of  them  is  this :  that  Crom- 
well's essential  claim  to  greatness  is  that  of  a  soldier 
who  won  victories,  that  his  political  action  was  a  series 
of  mistakes,  and  that  where  force  was  useless  he  failed. 
Oliver,  according  to  Mr.  Morley,  was  the  soldier  of 
the  great  English  Revolution,  and  not  its  chief.  For 
my  part  I  cannot  quite  accept  all  this,  and  Mr.  Morley 
himself  presently  uses  language  that  is  hardly  con- 
sistent. He  speaks  of  "  Oliver's  largeness  of  aim  ;  his 
freedom  of  spirit,  and  the  energy  that  comes  of  a  free 
spirit ;  the  presence  of  a  burning  light  in  his  mind ; 
his  good  faith,  his  valour,  his  constancy,"  —  these,  he 
thinks,  have  stamped  his  name  on  the  imagination  of 
men  over  all  the  vast  area  of  the  civilised  world.  Pre- 
cisely so,  but  these  are  not  the  qualities  by  which  the 
mere  soldier  is  remembered.  As  one  who  knew  him 
said,  "  a  larger  soul  hath  seldom  dwelt  in  a  house  of 
clay."  It  is  this  which  so  deeply  impressed  his  con- 
temporaries and  made  him  the  genius  of  the  English 
Revolution. 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  153 

It  was  not  only  this  heroic  nature,  this  largeness  of 
mind,  this  burning  light  in  his  mind  (expressions  that 
we  should  not  use  of  Wellington  or  Nelson)  which 
raise  Cromwell  so  far  above  the  mere  warrior,  but  it 
is  his  political  genius  and  his  resolute  statesmanship 
that  are  his  true  glory.  Perhaps  the  most  marvellous 
part  of  his  career  is  this,  that,  after  all  the  fighting  and 
confusion  of  the  Civil  Wars  and  the  overthrow  of  Par- 
liament and  monarchy,  England  enjoyed  for  nearly 
ten  years  after  Worcester,  internal  peace  and  order, 
without  disturbance  or  revolution.  To  tell  us  that 
the  man  who  secured  this  result,  so  marvellous  when 
we  consider  what  revolutions  and  civil  wars  mean,  was 
not  a  statesman  of  commanding  power,  is  surely  a 
paradox.  True,  the  institutions  of  the  Protectorate 
perished  in  form,  but  not  a  few  of  them  lived  in  spirit. 
As  Mr.  Gardiner  says,  these  "experiments"  were 
"anticipations  of  subsequent  legislation."  True,  the 
great  ideas  of  Oliver  and  his  heroic  experiments 
toward  civil  honesty  and  religious  toleration  were 
carried  out  one  or  two  generations  later  by  other  men, 
and  by  parties  who  owed  no  allegiance  to  him.  But 
that  is  the  way  with  the  slow  evolution  of  social  and 
religious  reform.  We  might  as  well  contend  that 
Julius  did  not  lay  the  foundations  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, nor  Charles  lay  the  foundations  of  mediaeval 
Europe,  nor  William  the  Silent  lay  the  foundations  of 
Dutch  independence.  If  Cromwell  was  a  mere  sol- 
dier, so  were  Julius,  Charles,  and  Orange  —  who  left 
nothing  solid  behind  them. 


154  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

Mr.  Morley  says  very  truly,  "  To  ignore  the  Restora- 
tion is  to  misjudge  the  Rebellion."  That  is  true 
enough  if  we  narrow  the  Civil  War  and  the  Common- 
wealth down  to  a  mere  rebellion.  But  to  ignore  the 
deposition  of  the  Stuarts  and  the  resettlement  of  1689 
is  to  misjudge  the  English  Revolution  as  a  whole. 
And  that  is  far  more  serious  error  than  to  misjudge 
the  "  Rebellion."  The  English  Revolution  which 
began  in  1629  lasted  at  least  for  a  century  —  as  revo- 
lutions usually  do.  The  Long  Parliament,  the  Civil 
Wars,  the  Commonwealth,  the  Protectorate,  the  Res- 
toration, the  so-called  "revolution"  of  1689,  the 
Hanoverian  settlement,  were  all  phases  of  it ;  but  the 
Commonwealth  and  Protectorate  were  the  decisive  acts 
of  it,  without  which  the  Long  Parliament  and  the 
crowning  mercies  of  Naseby  and  Worcester  and  the 
rest  would  have  proved  mere  incidental  rebellions.  It 
is  by  fixing  the  eye  too  closely  to  the  period  from 
1642  to  1662  that  Mr.  Morley,  like  Mr.  Gardiner, 
somewhat  loses  sight  of  Cromwell's  permanent  work. 
If  we  look  at  the  whole  period,  from  the  accession  of 
Charles  I  to  the  time  of  Walpole,  and  regard  it  as 
one  prolonged  revolution,  we  may  almost  think  Crom- 
well's share  in  the  great  evolution  of  English  society 
was  the  only  really  dominant  fact. 

It  is  part  of  the  same  view  that  leads  Mr.  Morley 
to  regard  "  Cromwell's  revolution  as  the  end  of  the 
mediaeval,  rather  than  the  beginning  of  the  modern 
era."  If  this  be  so,  cadit  qu<estio  —  then  Cromwell 
was  nothing  but  a  noble  soldier.  But  here,  again,  one 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  155 

may  ask  :  Was  Julius's  dictatorship  the  end  of  the  re- 
public, rather  than  the  beginning  of  the  empire  ? 
Was  Charlemagne's  reign  the  end  of  the  barbaric  in- 
vasions, or  the  beginning  of  feudal  settlement?  Was 
William's  achievement  the  expulsion  of  the  Spaniards 
from  the  Netherlands,  or  the  beginning  of  Dutch  inde- 
pendence ?  It  is  true  that  the  Civil  Wars  and  the 
Long  Parliament  ended  the  feudal  regime  in  England. 
But  Cromwell's  entire  bearing  as  general,  as  admin- 
istrator, as  protector,  and  as  legislator,  was  essentially 
and  utterly  modern,  inspired  with  modern  ideas  of 
honest  law,  social  quality,  capacity  in  lieu  of  birth,  le- 
gality in  lieu  of  privilege,  religious  freedom,  and  un- 
limited toleration  for  all  serious  opinions.  Oliver,  it 
is  true,  had  little  of  the  parliamentary  leader,  and 
nothing  of  the  conventional  democrat,  but  he  was  as 
much  a  man  with  modern  ideas  of  progress  as  Walpole, 
Peel,  or  Gladstone. 

In  venturing  to  ask  if  Mr.  Morley  has  quite  done 
justice  to  my  favourite  hero,  I  speak  with  all  the 
diffidence  of  a  disciple  who  questions  his  master,  and 
with  a  sense  that  this  masterly  portrait  drawn  by  Mr. 
Morley  accords  in  the  main  with  that  of  Mr.  Gardiner, 
who  is  far  the  greatest  living  authority  on  the  period. 
It  seems  also  to  have  satisfied  another  eminent  historian, 
Dr.  T.  Hodgkin,  who  in  the  fifth,  or  February,  number 
of  the  Monthly  Review  (p.  82),  has  published  a  sym- 
pathetic notice  of  Mr.  Morley's  book.  Dr.  Hodgkin 
incidentally  takes  up  a  point  whereon  Mr.  Gardiner 
has  condemned  the  judgment  of  Cromwell,  in  allying 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

himself  with  France  rather  than  Spain.  Mr.  Morley 
would  seem  to  follow  Gardiner  in  regarding  the  alli- 
ance with  Mazarin  as  short-sighted  policy  in  an 
English  statesman.  Dr.  Hodgkin  points  out  that  the 
contemporary  judgment  of  European  diplomatists,  and 
even  of  the  acute  delegates  of  Venice,  was  that  the  vast 
power  of  Spain  was  a  greater  menace  to  European 
peace  and  freedom  than  was  that  of  France.  Forty 
years  later  France  was  preponderant.  But,  as  Dr. 
Hodgkin  truly  says,  and  Mr.  Firth  agrees  with  him, 
a  practical  statesman,  dealing  with  the  facts  of  the 
hour,  could  hardly  be  expected  to  foresee  so  distant 
and  speculative  a  result. 

Mr.  Charles  Firth,  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  is  an 
authority  on  the  Civil  Wars  only  second  to  Mr. 
Gardiner.  He  prepared  the  Life  of  Cromwell  and  of 
so  many  of  the  leaders  of  that  age  for  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  and  his  edition  of  the  Clarke  Papers 
and  Essays  for  the  Royal  Historical  Society  are  known 
to  all  students  of  the  seventeenth  century.  His 
Oliver  Cromwell  (Putnam's  Sons,  1900)  is  the  view  of 
the  Protector  which  best  satisfies  me.  It  is  a  full  and 
detailed  narrative  of  Cromwell's  entire  career  based  on 
exhaustive  research  into  all  the  original  sources.  It  is 
more  complete  than  Mr.  Gardiner's  Oliver  Cromwell 
(410,  1899)  —  the  history  not  yet  being  completed - 
and  it  is  more  strictly  a  biography  of  Cromwell  than 
is  the  wide-ranging  work  of  Mr.  Morley.  I  cannot 
withhold  my  conviction  that  Mr.  Firth  altogether 
judges  Cromwell's  true  work  more  justly  than  either 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  157 

Gardiner  or  Morley,  whilst  he  agrees  almost  entirely 
with  their  estimate  of  Cromwell's  character  and  genius. 

Mr.  Firth  supports  Gardiner  and  Morley  in  reject- 
ing Carlyle's  ideal  of  the  divinely  inspired  hero ;  he 
agrees  with  them  in  regarding  Oliver  as  a  consummate 
soldier  and  a  conscientious  and  lofty  spirit.  But  Mr. 
Firth  sees  in  him  also  the  great  statesman  and  the 
founder  of  much  in  our  modern  history.  Both  as 
soldier  and  as  statesman,  he  says,  Cromwell  was  greater 
than  any  Englishman  of  his  time ;  and  we  must  look 
to  Caesar  or  Napoleon  for  a  parallel  to  such  an  union 
of  high  political  and  military  ability  in  one  man.  Mr. 
Firth  could  hardly  rate  higher  than  does  Mr.  Morley 
Cromwell's  marvellous  power  as  a  soldier,  and  this  is  the 
more  interesting  from  Mr.  Firth's  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  personnel  and  constitution  of  the  Ironsides  army. 
And  he  rightly  insists  on  the  cardinal  point  that  Crom- 
well, a  middle-aged  civilian,  created  the  instrument 
with  which  he  achieved  his  victories,  and  "  out  of  the 
military  chaos  which  existed  when  the  war  began  he 
organised  the  force  which  made  Puritanism  victo- 
rious." 

But  it  is  not  as  a  mere  soldier  that  Mr.  Firth  con- 
siders Cromwell.  He  rightly  does  justice  to  his  power 
as  a  statesman,  even  as  a  constructive  statesman  who 
has  left  permanent  results  in  our  history.  Mr.  Firth 
enlarges  on  Oliver's  social  and  political  reforms  with 
more  fulness  and  sympathy  than  either  Gardiner  or 
Morley.  In  his  seventeenth  chapter  Mr.  Firth  ex- 
plains the  eighty-two  ordinances  of  1653-1654,  nearly 


158  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

all  of  which  were  confirmed  by  the  Parliament  of  1656. 
It  is  true  that  all  the  laws  of  the  Protectorate  were 
annulled  at  the  Restoration  ;  but  they  are  nearly  all 
now  parts  of  our  daily  life.  The  relief  of  poor  pris- 
oners, the  maintenance  of  highways,  the  reorganisation 
of  the  Treasury,  the  settlement  of  Ireland  and  of  Scot- 
land, the  union  of  the  three  kingdoms,  —  these  are 
some  of  the  subjects  of  legislation.  Surely,  these  are 
not  mediaeval,  but  modern,  reforms,  and  testify  to 
Cromwell's  "faith  in  Progress,"  in  which  Mr.  Morley 
holds  him  deficient.  On  three  sets  of  ordinances  Mr. 
Firth  enlarges  —  reform  of  the  law,  reformation  of 
manners,  and  reorganisation  of  the  Church. 

Cromwell  in  truth  made  heroic  efforts  for  a  sweep- 
ing reform  of  the  law,  both  civil  and  criminal.  He 
did  this,  not  of  his  own  motion,  but  by  giving  a  free 
hand  to  Sir  Matthew  Hale  and  other  eminent  lawyers. 
The  reform  of  Chancery  was  established  in  1654-1656, 
and  was  the  basis  of  subsequent  reorganisation  of  that 
court.  Cromwell's  noble  protest  against  the  bloody 
code  of  the  criminal  law  was  not  finally  ratified  until 
the  nineteenth  century.  But  the  abolition  of  the  feudal 
tenures  and  the  mediaeval  land  law  was  confirmed  at 
the  Restoration,  and  has  never  been  set  aside.  Alto- 
gether the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate  form 
one  of  the  most  important  epochs  in  the  history  of 
our  law  reform. 

A  very  competent  lawyer,  Mr.  F.  A.  Inderwick,  K. 
C.,  has  traced  this  step  by  step  in  his  book,  The  Inter- 
regnum (1648-1660).  As  he  shows,  it  was  "the  foun- 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  159 

dation  to  a  great  extent  of  our  present  system."  The 
suppression  of  duelling,  the  establishment  of  a  letter 
post,  the  consolidation  of  highway  acts,  acts  against 
adultery  and  the  forcible  abduction  of  women,  —  are 
not  of  supreme  importance,  but  at  least  they  testify  to 
the  modern,  not  the  mediaeval,  spirit  of  Cromwell's 
government.  Other  great  reforms  were  the  restoration 
of  the  English  language  to  courts  of  justice  and  the 
suppression  of  the  antiquated  Norman  jargon,  the  sim- 
plification of  pleading,  and  the  abolition  of  fees  to 
judges  and  their  officers.  But  the  great  object  of 
all  law  reform  was,  as  it  has  ever  been,  the  Court  of 
Chancery ;  and,  in  this  perennial  struggle  between 
tradition  and  common  sense,  no  effort  has  been  more 
determined  than  that  of  the  Protector. 

The  efforts  made  by  Cromwell  and  his  Parliament 
for  the  reformation  of  manners,  against  cruel  sports, 
duelling,  immorality,  swearing,  drunkenness,  and  gam- 
bling, may  have  exceeded  the  public  opinion  of  that 
age,  indeed,  of  our  age.  But  it  ill  becomes  us  to  say 
that  they  were  wholly  devoid  of  permanent  effect  in 
that  they  were  swept  away  by  a  profligate  Restoration, 
if  the  progress  of  civilisation  has  at  length  put  an 
end  to  their  worst  excesses.  The  reorganisation  of 
the  Church  lay  at  the  heart  of  Oliver,  and  in  dealing 
with  this  Augean  stable,  his  good  work  was  natu- 
rally destroyed  when  an  obscene  Monarchy  recalled 
a  persecuting  Prelacy.  His  valiant  efforts  to  protect 
Catholics,  Quakers,  and  Jews  from  proscription  needed 
centuries  to  be  fulfilled  in  deeds.  But,  as  Mr.  Firth 


l6o  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

says :  "  Cromwell's  ecclesiastical  system  passed  away 
with  its  author,  but  no  man  exerted  more  influence 
on  the  religious  development  of  England.  Thanks 
to  him,  Nonconformity  had  time  to  take  root  and  to 
grow  so  strong  in  England  that  the  storm  which  fol- 
lowed the  Restoration  had  no  power  to  root  it  up." 

Mr.  Firth  is  not  at  all  satisfied  that  Cromwell's  for- 
eign policy  was  wholly  mistaken  and  abortive.  He 
says,  "  It  was  in  part  a  failure,  but  only  in  part."  Of 
the  three  dominant  ideas  of  that  policy,  —  (i)  to  up- 
hold the  Protestant  faith,  (2)  to  extend  English  trade, 
(3)  to  prevent  foreign  intervention  in  England,  —  the 
first  only  was  misconceived  and  without  signal  result, 
the  other  two  objects  were  triumphantly  successful. 
Cromwell,  as  Gardiner  has  shown  us,  misunderstood 
many  things,  and  was  far  too  sanguine  of  possible 
good,  in  the  complicated  imbroglio  of  European  diplo- 
macy. But  Mr.  Firth  rightly  does  justice  to  the  gran- 
deur of  his  conception,  and  takes  due  account  of  the 
difficulties  of  the  situation  and  the  prejudices  of  the 
age  and  school  in  which  he  was  reared.  What  Eng- 
lish statesman  from  Cardinal  Wolsey,  Queen  Elizabeth, 
down  to  Chatham,  Pitt,  Palmerston,  and  Gladstone, 
has  not  misunderstood  the  play  of  European  forces, 
and  failed  in  many  of  his  cherished  adventures  ? 

Cromwell's  colonial  policy,  Mr.  Firth  finds,  was  a 
greater  success.  He  was  "the  first  English  ruler  who 
systematically  employed  the  power  of  the  government 
to  increase  and  extend  the  colonial  possession  of  Eng- 
land." It  was  during  the  Protectorate  that  the  nas- 


RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL  l6l 

cent  colonies  were  consolidated  into  what  may  be  called 
the  nucleus  of  the  Empire.  In  spite  of  the  disastrous 
attack  on  Hispaniola,  the  capture  of  Jamaica  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  British  West  Indies,  which  was  the 
most  fruitful  part  of  his  external  policy,  and  produced 
the  most  abiding  results.  Cromwell  is  certainly  the 
first  systematic  founder  of  British  Imperialism  ;  and  he 
is  honoured  or  denounced  as  such  by  the  two  parties 
which  approve  or  regret  that  growth  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  But  it  is  hard  to  doubt  that  the  man  who, 
for  the  first  time,  held  in  so  firm  a  hand  the  three  king- 
doms, and  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  Empire 
across  the  seas,  left  solid  and  permanent  effects  on  the 
history  of  our  country. 

The  "  institutions  "  which  Cromwell  designed  were 
undoubtedly  swept  away  by  that  flooded  sewer  we  call 
the  "Restoration";  but  Cromwell  never  intended 
them  to  be  permanent.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that 
they  were  a  temporary  stop-gap,  designed  to  give 
an  epoch  of  calm  and  recovery  to  the  storm-tossed 
land.  He  made  no  attempt  to  found  a  dynasty,  or  to 
resettle  the  Constitution.  He  spoke  of  himself  as  a 
constable  put  in  power  to  keep  order,  to  stem  the 
tide  of  anarchy,  and  prevent  return  of  the  Stuart  mon- 
archy. These  things  he  achieved  whilst  his  life  lasted, 
and  for  two  years  after  his  death.  His  great  ideas, 
which  he  had  attempted  to  plant,  —  liberty  of  con- 
science, final  breach  with  absolute  monarchy  and  feudal 
aristocracy,*union  of  the  three  kingdoms,  mastery  of 
the  seas,  extension  of  trade,  legal  reform,  and  a  colonial 

M 


1 62  RECENT    BIOGRAPHIES    OF    CROMWELL 

empire,  —  were  all  made  permanent  bases  of  English 
policy  by  his  successors  within  the  next  generation,  or 
at  most  the  next  hundred  years. 

In  a  fine  peroration  Mr.  Firth  has  summed  up  his 
estimate  of  this  work  :  — 

"  So  the  Protector's  institutions  perished  with  him  and  his 
work  ended  in  apparent  failure.  Yet  he  had  achieved  great 
things.  Thanks  to  his  sword,  absolute  monarchy  failed  to  take 
root  in  English  soil.  Thanks  to  his  sword,  Great  Britain 
emerged  from  the  chaos  of  the  Civil  Wars  one  strong  state  in- 
stead of  three  separate  and  hostile  communities.  Nor  were 
the  results  of  his  action  entirely  negative.  The  ideas  which 
inspired  his  policy  exerted  a  lasting  influence  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  English  state.  Thirty  years  after  his  death  the 
religious  liberty  for  which  he  fought  was  established  by  law. 
The  union  with  Scotland  and  Ireland,  which  the  statesmen 
of  the  Restoration  undid,  the  statesmen  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury effected.  The  mastery  of  the  seas  he  had  desired  to  gain 
and  the  Greater  Britain  he  had  sought  to  build  up  became 
sober  realities.  Thus  others  perfected  the  work  which  he 
had  designed  and  attempted.  No  English  ruler  did  more  to 
shape  the  future  of  the  land  he  governed." 

This  I  hold  to  be  the  real  Cromwell  —  the  truth 
about  the  work  of  the  Protector.  And  it  seems  to  me 
a  paradox  to  call  this  work  "negative,"  or  to  deny  that 
he  left  a  permanent  reconstruction  on  the  face  of  his 
country. 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 


Republicanism   and   Democracy 

A   LECTURE   DELIVERED   TO   THE    POLITICAL    EDUCATION    LEAGUE   OF 
NEW  YORK 

SOCIETY  is  a  living  organism  —  an  infinitely  complex 
organic  system  of  mutually  correlated  organs,  indispen- 
sable to  each  other,  and  having  really  no  independent 
life.  Human  nature  is  not  a  bundle  of  sticks  or  a 
sack  of  potatoes.  It  is  a  living  body;  and  it  can  no 
more  be  truly  separated  into  parts  than  a  living  man 
can  be  separated  into  a  digestive  apparatus  and  a  ner- 
vous system. 

Society  is  an  organism,  and  it  must  be  treated  as  a 
whole.  The  elements  of  society  (i.e.  of  humanity) 
can  be  separated  only  in  thought,  not  in  fact.  The 
State,  the  Church,  Law,  Public  Opinion,  Economics, 
Ethics,  are  subjects  which  we  may  reason  about  sepa- 
rately, and  detach  in  the  abstract.  But  for  all  pur- 
poses of  concrete  application  we  must  consider  them 
as  depending  one  on  each  other. 

Now  the  popular  social  and  political  schemes  treat 
society  piecemeal,  in  arbitrary  sections.  They  study 
society  in  analytic  groups,  and  then  they  begin  to  act 
as  if  these  groups  were  separable  factors.  It  is  as 
though  physicians  and  surgeons,  after  studying  the 

165 


1 66  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

physical  organism,  first  as  skeleton,  then  as  nervous 
and  digestive  apparatus,  then  as  a  circulating  system, 
were  to  begin  to  treat  any  one  of  them  by  itself,  as 
if  bone,  heart,  or  brain  could  be  treated  by  drugs  or 
instruments  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  body,  and  with- 
out reference  to  any  reaction  such  treatment  might 
cause  elsewhere.  The  socialist,  the  communist,  the 
cooperator,  the  democratic  reformer,  the  land  re- 
former, the  suffrage  reformer,  the  temperance  or 
sex  agitation,  confine  themselves  to  one  definite  ele- 
ment or  capacity  in  human  nature,  and  go  for  their 
own  particular  remedy  without  any  regard  for  the 
rest  of  the  social  organism. 

I  can  only  deal  with  these  great  social  problems 
from  my  own  point  of  view.  And  I  have  been  trained 
in  the  Positivist  school  on  the  principles  of  Auguste 
Comte.  Now  the  Positivist  scheme,  true  to  its  uni- 
formly synthetic  character,  treats  society  organically. 
Every  one  of  the  institutions,  methods,  doctrines,  it 
puts  forward  has  to  be  viewed  with  reference  to  every 
other.  It  is  an  attempt  to  restore  health  to  the  body 
politic  by  a  comprehensive  treatment  of  the  whole 
constitution,  and  not  by  applying  local  remedies  to 
particular  parts  or  organs.  This  proviso  should  pre- 
vent many  objections  which  are  made  by  hasty  critics. 
They  estimate  the  Positive  synthesis,  bit  by  bit,  in 
the  light  of  their  own  analytic  notions,  quite  over- 
looking the  truth  that  each  institution  and  doctrine 
in  any  really  synthetic  scheme  implies  the  rest.  And 
underlying  all  is  the  institution  of  a  strong  and  active 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  l6j 

public  opinion,  resting  on  an  organised  education, 
moral  as  well  as  intellectual,  common  to  all,  and  modi- 
fying habits  and  all  forces.  Without  this  vigorous 
public  opinion,  all  social  and  political  schemes  are  little 
more  than  nostrums.  Having  this  public  opinion  to 
moralise  the  whole  social  organism,  the  weaknesses  of 
institutions  may  be  corrected  and  supplemented.  All 
institutions  and  political  devices  need  this. 

Try  the  effect  of,  a  right  moral  education  in  the 
world,  before  you  seek  to  pull  things  to  pieces  by 
legal  and  practical  revolutions.  Thus,  when  we  reject 
communism  as  the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem, 
we  propose  as  the  basis  of  an  industrial  society  amoral 
(not  a  material)  socialism.  That  is  to  say,  we  propose 
to  obtain  the  end  by  transforming  opinions  and  habits, 
and  not  by  violently  revolutionising  social  institutions. 
But  how  are  we  to  transform  opinions  and  habits,  the 
communist  asks  ?  By  forming,  we  reply,  a  new  public 
opinion,  by  a  complete  education,  by  an  educating  body, 
by  a  religion  of  duty. 

But  we  also  presuppose,  as  an  antecedent  condition 
of  such  public  opinion,  a  transformed  State,  one  in 
which  the  workman  is  guaranteed  all  that  the  State  can 
give  to  improve  his  material  condition  without  injuring 
the  rest  of  the  community  ;  secondly,  a  real  republic, 
that  is,  a  State  wherein  the  ultimate  power  rests  with 
the  body  of  the  people.  By  republic  we  mean  a 
commonwealth  resting  on  the  will  and  devoted  to  the 
interests  of  all  citizens  alike;  having  these  three 
qualities — (i)  repudiating  all  hereditary  functions  or 


1 68  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

privileges,  (2)  renouncing  all  class  exclusions,  (3)  re- 
cognising no  property  in  any  public  thing.  A  repub- 
lic is  a  commonwealth  where  the  whole  common  force 
is  directed  to  the  welfare  of  all  citizens  equally,  as  its 
raison  d'etre.  This  is  the  normal  and  only  permanent 
form  of  the  body  politic  in  advanced  civilised  com- 
munities of  free  citizens. 

This  republican  type  is  practically,  but  imperfectly 
and  irregularly,  realised  in  England.  In  form,  but  in 
little  more  than  form,  we  retain  a  monarchy,  which 
an  acute  and  conservative  observer  described  as  the 
"theatric,"  or  show  part,  of  the  British  Constitution. 
The  monarchy  preserves  certain  traditional  features  of 
England,  exerts  a  steady  and  uniform  pressure  to  keep 
society  in  an  organic  form,  and  at  times  no  doubt 
serves  certain  useful  purposes.  But  we  know  that  in 
all  the  larger  things,  and  directly  the  nation  is  roused 
and  has  a  will  of  its  own,  the  throne  becomes  a  mere 
symbol,  without  the  smallest  power  even  of  retarding 
a  definite  policy. 

The  other  obstacle  to  the  republican  type  is  the 
existence  of  a  hereditary  chamber,  which  under  the 
growth  of  democracy  in  the  Lower  House  is  becom- 
ing perhaps  more  powerful  as  a  resisting  force  than 
it  has  been  for  the  last  sixty  years.  An  heredi- 
tary chamber  is  obviously  irreconcilable  with  any  re- 
publican principle ;  and  when  this  chamber  is,  in  the 
theory  of  the  Constitution,  the  equal  of  the  elected 
chamber,  and  under  given  conditions  is  able  for  a  time 
to  make  its  equality  felt,  it  becomes  a  very  serious 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  169 

source  of  disturbance  and  embarrassment.  Still,  since 
it  is  admitted  that  the  resistance  of  the  Upper  House 
is  a  purely  temporary  one,  that  its  action  is  dilatory 
only,  that  it  has  no  originating  power  to  force  on  the 
country  any  policy  of  its  own ;  since  it  becomes  a 
merely  formal  registering  body  whenever  a  conserva- 
tive majority  exists  in  the  elective  chamber ;  and  since 
it  can  never  under  any  circumstances  interfere  in  any- 
thing touching  finance  and  expenditure,  —  it  must  be 
taken  that  the  House  of  Lords  has  an  indirect  and  re- 
tarding effect  on  the  body  politic,  but  not  a  decisive 
or  dominant  effect.  Both  monarchy  and  House  of 
Lords,  from  time  to  time,  affect  English  political  de- 
velopment for  evil,  especially  the  second ;  but  neither 
of  them  separately,  nor  even  both  together,  neutralise 
the  principle  that  England  is  a  republic,  a  democratic 
republic,  modified  by  powerful  aristocratic  and  monar- 
chic institutions.  The  republican  type  is  fully  realised 
in  the  United  States,  in  Switzerland,  and  practically 
in  many  of  the  smaller  states  of  Europe,  such  as  Greece, 
Norway,  Holland,  Denmark,  even  though  all  of  these 
retain  a  ceremonial  monarchy,  and  it  is  essentially  but 
not  completely  realised  in  France.  A  typical  republic 
implies  the  complete  extinction  of  all  hereditary  insti- 
tutions, of  class  manners,  and  of  all  privileged  orders, 
or  churches,  and  France  retains  all  of  these  things, 
though  in  very  vanishing  form.  The  United  States 
and  Switzerland  are  as  yet  the  only  complete  types  of 
the  pure  republic ;  though  many  persons  will  think 
that  the  unscrupulous  power  of  wealth  in  America,  and 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

the  low  inorganic  condition  of  social  life  in  Switzerland, 
present  evils  as  bad  as  the  aristocratic  institutions  of 
England,  if  not  worse. 

The  Positive  synthesis,  to  begin  at  the  beginning, 
is  hostile  to  every  proposal  for  aggrandising  the  State, 
whether  of  the  imperial  or  the  communistic  type. 
As  it  trusts  the  main  influence  in  the  moral  and  spir- 
itual sphere  to  education,  so  it  would  commit  the  main 
work  in  the  political  sphere  to  public  opinion.  As  in 
the  moral  world  the  problem  is  to  organise  education, 
so  in  the  political  sphere  the  main  problem  is  to  or- 
ganise public  opinion.  If  we  could  accomplish  that, 
all  the  schemes  for  increasing  the  power  of  the  State 
may  be  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Positivism  has  care- 
fully considered  the  mode  of  organising  public  opin- 
ion, in  the  first  place  by  providing  for  the  people  a 
common  education  of  a  high  and  complete  sort;  next, 
by  greatly  increasing  the  leisure  of  the  people  by  re- 
duced hours  of  labour  and  constant  holidays ;  thirdly, 
by  the  regular  institution  and  immense  increase  of 
workmen's  clubs  and  meetings  for  political  discussion ; 
fourthly,  by  the  wholly  new  institution  of  requiring 
public  appointments  to  be  submitted  to  the  test  of 
public  approval ;  and  lastly,  by  guaranteeing,  as  a  social 
and  religious  institution,  complete  freedom  of  speech. 
With  this,  the  form  of  government  would  become  a 
thing  of  minor  importance. 

We  are  all  so  saturated  with  ideas  of  parliamentary 
government  that  we  do  not  easily  imagine  any  other 
as  possible.  Parliamentary  government  in  England 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  IJl 

is  quite  a  special  national  product,  apparently  innate  in 
the  British  race,  and  indigenous  in  our  own  peculiar 
social  type.  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny  that  it  may 
continue  for  many  generations  to  work  under  a  revised 
form  in  Britain  ;  but  it  seems  quite  unfit  for  France 
and  most  other  countries  of  Europe,  and  to  be  rather 
a  scandalous  parody  even  in  the  United  States.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  sociology  and  of  human  society, 
we  could  not  regard  what  is  an  anomaly  in  the  British 
island  as  a  normal  type.  So  that  what  we  say  as  to 
parliamentary  institutions  may  require  some  modifica- 
tion when  applied  to  this  country. 

Comte  proposed  to  retain  (for  the  present)  a  Parlia- 
ment elected  by  universal  suffrage  with  complete  con- 
trol over  the  expenditure,  but  not  directly  charged 
with  administrative  functions.  For  the  effective  con- 
trol over  the  executive  government  he  would  rely  far 
more  upon  public  opinion  than  on  Parliament.  And 
that  is  what  we  are  now  coming  to  do.  Parliamentary 
government  still  retains  a  vast  power  over  the  imagi- 
nation and  even  over  the  affections  of  Englishmen, 
because  it  really  represents  to  us  the  republic ;  it 
represents  the  People  and  Progress  in  the  great  strug- 
gle with  Monarchy  and  Feudalism.  To  us,  Parlia- 
ment is  the  only  instrument  whereby  a  despotic 
executive  has  been  curbed  and  shorn  of  its  intoler- 
ance. Its  glory  is  that  it  has  been  the  moderating  and 
humanising  force  of  our  monarchy.  But  now  that 
the  monarchy  is  a  shadow,  and  Parliament  has  no 
function  as  a  counterpoise,  and  the  two  Houses  of 


1 72  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

Parliament  are  now  balanced  in  such  a  way  as  to  pro- 
duce a  chronic  deadlock,  men  are  seriously  asking 
themselves  if  Parliament  deserves  this  regard  and  affec- 
tion. What  is  there  to  show  to-day  that  Parliament 
is  the  normal  executive  organ  for  an  advanced  repub- 
lic ?  Do  we  see  it  to  be  so  in  the  United  States,  or 
in  France  ?  On  the  contrary,  in  the  only  great  and 
complete  republics  we  have  seen  for  the  last  two 
generations,  the  tendency  of  Parliament  elected  by 
universal  suffrage  is  to  make  a  stable  and  vigorous 
executive  impossible,  and  that  whilst  failing  to  pass 
any  sound  system  of  industrial  and  social  legislation. 
Like  every  other  system  devised  and  perfected  to  act 
as  a  check  and  a  counterpoise  on  tyranny,  parliaments 
are  impotent  in  the  ordinary  course  as  positive  organs 
of  progressive  government. 

Parliamentary  government  is  not  truly  republican 
except  in  great  revolutionary  crises,  when  it  may  be- 
come for  a  time  a  mighty  engine  of  reform.  The  Eng- 
lish Long  Parliament  of  1640,  the  English  Convention 
of  1689,  the  first  American  Congress,  the  French 
States-General  and  Convention,  our  Reformed  Parlia- 
ment of  1832,  did  tremendous  work  of  a  revolutionary 
sort.  But  when  Parliament  settles  into  a  mere  insti- 
tution, especially  when  it  undertakes  the  administrative 
machinery  of  a  vast  aggregate  of  states,  it  soon  ceases 
to  be  either  truly  republican,  or  really  practical.  In 
the  first  place,  it  passes  largely  into  the  hands  of  the 
rich,  or  of  those  who  are  seeking  to  become  rich,  or 
who  are  the  creatures  of  the  rich  —  as  we  see  in  Eng- 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  173 

land,  in  France,  in  the  United  States.  Secondly,  it 
passes  under  the  control  of  the  professional  debaters, 
whether  lawyers,  journalists,  or  office-seekers,  whose 
eloquence  and  activity  is  as  little  inspired  by  the  wel- 
fare of  the  republic  as  that  of  an  Old  Bailey  advocate 
is  by  the  virtue  of  his  client  in  the  dock.  Under  the 
combined  influence  of  the  ambitious  men  of  wealth, 
and  of  the  professional  men  of  the  tongue,  Parliaments 
too  often  sway  backward  and  forward,  doing  nothing 
but  debate  and  rearrange  ministries,  retarding,  obscur- 
ing, and  falsifying  public  opinion. 

Parliament,  in  our  country  within  the  last  two  cen- 
turies and  particularly  within  the  last  two  generations, 
has  completely  changed  its  original  character  and  func- 
tion without  any  definite  change  in  the  Constitution, 
or  any  formal  authority  for  the  change.  We  still  call 
it  the  legislature  ;  but  it  is  much  more  of  a  huge  ex- 
ecutive committee  than  a  legislature.  It  passes  new 
laws  very  slowly  and  occasionally ;  its  financial  busi- 
ness is  settled  in  a  few  nights,  often  without  any  seri- 
ous examination.  But  it  devotes  violent  and  prolonged 
debates  to  very  small  executive  details,  and  brings  the 
conduct  of  the  State  at  last  to  something  rather  like 
government  by  public  meeting.  A  common  legal  pro- 
ceeding in  Connemara  or  Shetland,  the  act  of  an  official 
in  British  Columbia  or  on  the  banks  of  the  Nyanza,  are 
equally  the  subject  for  vehement  debates.  Is  Parlia- 
ment a  consultative  body,  a  ratifying  body,  or  a  law- 
making  body  —  an  initiative  or  a  court  of  appeal  ?  Is 
it  a  legislature,  or  is  it  an  executive  ?  It  claims  to 


174  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

be,  and  acts  as  if  it  were  all  of  these  at  the  same  time 
and  much  more,  as  if  it  were  kings,  Lords,  Com- 
mons, public  meeting,  High  Court  of  Justice,  inter- 
national arbitrator,  the  grand  official  journal,  and 
controller  of  all  public  officials,  great  and  small,  from 
a  lord  chancellor  to  a  doorkeeper. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  how  Parliament  is  to  be  at  the 
same  time  a  legislature  and  also  an  executive  —  for 
the  body  which  controls,  cross-examines,  and  modifies 
the  executive,  day  by  day,  is  the  executive.  The  diffi- 
culty about  a  Parliament  being  the  real  Executive 
arises  when  Parliament  is  not  homogeneous.  In  Eng- 
land at  times  the  two  Houses  are  in  direct  and  system- 
atic conflict.  Then  the  plan  is  for  the  large  minority 
in  the  Lower  House,  leagued  with  the  conservative 
majority  in  the  Upper  House,  to  make  legislation 
impossible  and  executive  government  as  difficult  as 
possible.  Whilst  the  House  of  Lords  remains  un- 
touched, that  state  of  things  is  certain  to  continue ; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  popular  legislation  or  a 
really  democratic  party  can  succeed,  without  some  con- 
stitutional change.  In  the  meantime,  Parliament, 
divided  against  itself,  is  neither  legislature  nor  execu- 
tive in  any  active  and  free  sense. 

The  legislative  function  of  Parliament  is  not  a 
reality,  so  long  as  nine-tenths  of  the  hereditary  House 
decline  to  attend,  to  listen,  to  consider,  or  to  under- 
stand the  points  under  debate,  and  yet  have  an  equal 
voice  in  all  legislation  with  the  elected  representatives 
of  six  millions.  The  executive  functions  of  Parliament 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  175 

can  only  be  exercised  for  harm,  so  long  as  every  petty 
administrative  act  or  order  is  liable  to  be  debated  by  a 
miscellaneous  crowd  of  680  talkers,  many  of  them 
ignorant,  ill-informed,  unscrupulous,  and  eager,  not  to 
do  what  is  right,  but  to  win  credit  for  themselves  and 
bring  discredit  on  their  rivals.  Such  is  the  ignoble 
end  to  which  the  mother  of  free  Parliament  seems  too 
often  to  descend. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  solemn  cant  still  pervading 
our  superstitious  reverence  for  parliamentary  govern- 
ment. What  does  it  mean  ?  Parliamentary  govern- 
ment means,  literally,  government  by  a  talking  assembly. 
But  the  real  deliberative  and  critical  assembly  of  the 
nation  is  a  much  larger  and  freer  thing.  It  is  the 
nation  itself,  quite  as  well  informed  of  the  facts  as 
the  M.P.'s,  and  meeting  in  ten  thousand  unofficial 
parliaments  by  day  and  night.  The  deliberative 
functions  of  Parliament  are  now  quite  superseded  by 
public  opinion;  and  the  House  of  Commons  is  a  very 
belated,  imperfect,  and  often  perverse  representative 
of  public  opinion.  It  is  easily  converted  into  a  retro- 
grade and  retarding  force,  as  we  often  see  in  some 
scheme  of  social  reform,  which  all  parties  in  Parliament 
profess  themselves  anxious  to  pass,  the  principle  and 
general  lines  of  which  have  been  heartily  accepted  by 
an  overwhelming  weight  of  public  opinion,  almost 
without  any  definite  difference  of  purpose, —  but  which 
is  still  adjourned  from  year  to  year. 

There  is  much  more  to  be  said  for  the  doctrine  of 
pure  democracy  —  as  now  practised  under  the  referen- 


176  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

dum  —  the  direct  vote  on  a  definite  measure  of  the 
entire  body  of  citizens.  But  a  pure  democracy  of  the 
Athenian  type  cannot  be  worked  except  in  such  a 
small  community  as  that  which  met  on  the  Pnyx, 
where  the  bulk  of  the  active  citizens  in  the  state  could 
all  be  assembled  within  the  hearing  of  one  man's  voice. 
And  the  referendum  —  or  direct  vote  —  is  only  possible 
where  the  vote  taken  is  a  bare  Yes,  or  No ;  the  mere 
acceptance  of  a  particular  law,  measure,  or  minister. 
No  modification,  qualification,  or  other  variation  is 
possible  under  any  system  of  referendum  or  other 
type  of  direct  democratic  vote.  Government  cannot 
be  carried  on  by  crowds,  or  in  crowds.  A  House  of 
680  members,  coming  and  going,  intriguing  and  group- 
ing anew  day  by  day,  has  some  of  the  worst  faults  of 
a  crowd. 

The  arguments  for  pure  democratic  government,  for 
reaching  directly  the  whole  body  of  citizens,  are  all 
negative.  They  aim  at  getting  rid  of  some  evil ;  they 
do  not  pretend  to  claim  any  direct  advantage.  They 
appeal  to  the  sentiments  of  jealousy,  self-interest,  and 
self-assertion.  Their  sole  claim  is  to  neutralise  the 
effect  of  aristocratic  or  monarchic  pressure.  The 
most  daring  publicist  has  not  ventured  to  assert  that 
pure  democracy,  or  the  direct  intervention  of  all  in 
government,  is  per  se  the  best  method  of  obtaining 
efficient  government.  He  only  prefers  it  as  a  mode 
of  preventing  the  people  being  forced  to  submit  to 
what  they  hate,  and  plundered  by  those  whom  they 
cannot  resist.  The  pure  democratic  principle  was  de- 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  177 

signed  to  combat  gross  abuses,  ancient  institutions, 
and  rank  superstitions.  It  has  often  served  this  end 
with  striking  success. 

But  the  whole  problem  is  transposed  by  the  Positive 
scheme  which  would  take  from  government  its  power 
for  evil,  and  strengthen  the  people  by  a  new  organiza- 
tion of  public  opinion.  Real  republican  sentiment 
is  accomplished  by  this  better  than  by  any  conceivable 
reform  of  the  franchise  or  system  of  checks. 

The  first  condition  is  a  strict  limitation  of  the  sphere 
of  government. 

i.  The  chief  and  foremost  limitation  is  to  reduce  the 
military  function  to  pure  defence.  No  one  can  pretend 
that  this  is  possible  at  this  hour.  We  are  not  here  dis- 
cussing what  any  President  here,  or  any  ministry  in  our 
country,  are  likely  to  do  about  the  army  and  the  navy. 
We  are  looking  forward  to  a  time  when  industry,  not 
empire,  shall  be  the  end  of  human  ambition  and  the 
desire  of  true  patriotism.  Standing  armies  might  then 
be  replaced  by  such  an  adequate  militia,  of  which 
we  already  have  types  in  the  Swiss  and  the  American 
republics.  There,  no  doubt  under  very  special  geo- 
graphical conditions,  but  conditions  totally  different,  a 
free  and  proud  people  have  organised  a  militia  amply 
adequate  to  protect  their  independence,  at  a  minimum 
drain  on  the  freedom  of  the  population,  and  a  minimum 
of  expenditure  on  the  taxes  of  the  country.  At  least 
this  was  true  in  the  United  States  down  to  the  war 
with  Spain.  Their  scientific  services,  their  staff,  and 
in  the  case  of  Switzerland,  their  military  organisation 


178  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

and  powers  of  mobilisation,  are  judged  by  experts  to 
be  ample  for  mere  defence,  and  no  other  object  can 
ever  cross  the  mind  of  a  Swiss.  Wild  as  it  sounds  to- 
day, the  day  is  at  hand  when  Europe  may  abolish  its 
huge  armaments,  renounce  all  military  habits  and  pre- 
judices ;  and  having  paid  off  their  vast  debts,  the  sinis- 
ter inheritance  from  past  wars,  at  one  stroke  reduce 
the  national  expenditure  by  one-third,  or  even  one- 
half. 

2.  Next,  of  course,  these  vast    aggregate  empires 
must  disappear.     They  are  all  the  creation  of  war,  they 
all  exist  only  by  chronic  war,  or  preparation  for  war  ;  and 
they  all  mean  oppression  and  race  tyranny.     The  Rus- 
sian, Austrian,  German,  the    British   Empire,  are  all 
oppressive  aggregates,  with  their  origin  in   conquest, 
and  their  standing  character  of  race  ascendency.     Nor 
are  France,  Italy,  and  Sweden  without  elements  of  the 
same  kind  in  less  marked  degree.     All  of  these  vast 
tyrannous  empires    must  dissolve  before  we    reach  a 
normal  state,  which  will  be  that  of  smaller,  homogeneous, 
industrial,  and  peaceful  republics. 

3.  Without  unnecessary  armies  and  fleets,  without 
scattered  empires,  and  with  no  subject  races  to  coerce, 
the  sphere  of  the  central  govenment  would  be  simple 
enough.     It  would  be  confined  to  maintaining  order, 
providing  for  health,  promoting  and  assisting  industry 
in  all  its  forms,  and  supplying  a  simple,  cheap,  and  sci- 
entific system  of  law. 

4.  Lastly,  the   temporal    government  would    have 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  any  moral,  intellectual,  or 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  IJ() 

spiritual  concern  —  neither  with  any  church,  sect,  or 
creed ;  with  no  matter  of  education,  with  no  academy 
or  learned  society.  All  these  things  would  belong  to 
independent,  moral,  intellectual,  and  religious  move- 
ments. And  this  great  end  has  been  virtually  attained 
in  the  United  States  —  and  only  there. 

Relieve  government  of  its  absorbing  military  duties  ; 
take  it  out  of  any  class  interest ;  remove  from  its  sphere 
all  religious  questions,  and  suppose  extinct  all  those 
vexed  international  questions,  and  incessant  frontier 
wars  in  all  parts  of  the  globe, — and  the  sphere  of  gov- 
ernment becomes  simple  enough  and  hardly  a  matter 
for  desperate  contention  between  rival  parties. 

The  sphere  of  government  would  be  reduced  to  this : 
—  Protect  the  nation  from  foreign  enemies ;  organise 
an  efficient  police ;  administer  equal,  cheap,  speedy 
law;  protect,  assist,  stimulate,  and  moderate  industry; 
prevent  groups  encroaching  on  others ;  stop  bands  of 
marauders  who  seek  to  make  aggression  on  other 
peoples,  civilised  or  barbarous ;  provide  for  the  health 
of  great  cities  and  of  rural  districts  by  establishing 
local  bodies  charged  with  providing  air,  open  spaces, 
recreation  grounds  for  the  people,  pure,  unlimited, 
gratuitous  water,  which  stands  on  the  same  footing  as 

O  •*  O 

air,  primary  education,  healthy  comfortable  homes  for 
the  people,  museums,  galleries,  libraries, and  other  means 
of  culture.  These  are  the  natural  business  of  the  local 
bodies ;  the  task  of  the  central  government  is  to  stimu- 
late and  control  them,  and  arbitrate  upon  their  mutual 
conflicts  and  rivalries.  When  government  is  reduced 


l8o  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

to  these  six  great  departments,  when  it  is  relieved  from 
the  care  of  vast  armies  and  vast  fleets,  from  the  load 
of  debt,  from  irritating  questions  of  religion  and  edu- 
cation, from  ecclesiastical  patronage,  from  all  direct  care 
of  education,  from  all  hereditary  pensions,  from  the 
absurd  paraphernalia  of  courts,  embassies,  and  sinecures, 
little  would  be  left  to  struggle  for.  The  national  ex- 
penditure, even  if  doubled  and  trebled  for  public  works, 
central  museums,  galleries,  libraries,  and  so  forth,  might 
be  reduced  to  one-third  of  our  actual  budget  expendi- 
ture, which  should  easily  be  raised  by  a  real  land  tax, 
a  graduated  income  tax,  increased  succession  duty,  and 
customs  and  excise  on  luxuries  only. 

The  furious  struggles  of  our  modern  States,  rang- 
ing from  revolutionary  anarchy  to  imperialist  tyranny, 
rise  out  of  the  claim  to  determine  a  set  of  questions,  all 
of  which  take  their  origin  either  in  military  or  feudal 
habits.  The  ambition  of  Tzars  and  Emperors  to 
dominate  Europe,  the  ambition  of  our  own  imperialist 
parties  to  extend  an  empire  scattered  over  the  planet, 
create  a  tyranny,  against  which  a  desperate  reaction 
sets  in.  Note  the  questions  about  which  our  rival 
parties  have  been  struggling  for  the  last  ten  years,  in- 
deed for  twenty  years ;  they  may  all  be  ultimately 
traced  back  to  war,  to  thirst  for  domination,  aggrandis- 
ing the  empire,  securing  the  ascendency  of  some  con- 
quering race  or  order,  or  maintaining  the  privileges, 
and  ascendency  of  some  church  or  creed.  Jingoism, 
the  foreign  wars  in  Asia  and  in  Africa;  Zulu,  Ashantee, 
Matabele  wars ;  Egyptian,  Soudan  wars ;  Burmese, 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  l8l 

Afghan  wars;  Boer  wars;  the  Irish  struggle,  the  educa- 
tion struggle,  the  church  struggle, — all  have  their  origin 
in  the  effort  of  one  race,  or  party,  or  sect,  or  order  to 
domineer  over  others.  When  we  rightly  understand 
what  is  within,  and  what  is  not  within,  the  sphere  of 
normal  government,  and  have  forsworn  war,  class,  and 
sect,  the  rage  to  wield  political  power  will  be  found  to 
be  extinct. 

We  should  then  be  no  more  consumed  with  the  de- 
sire to  direct  the  government  of  the  nation  than  we 
now  desire  to  determine  in  what  part  of  the  city  shall 
be  the  beats  of  the  A  Division  or  the  X  Division  of 
Police.  The  ordering  of  such  matters  of  internal  ad- 
ministrative will  naturally  pass  into  the  hands  of  those 
who  have  special  interest  and  experience  of  such  details. 
The  difficulty  will  be  to  induce  capable  citizens  to  con- 
cern themselves  enough  in  such  burdensome  problems. 
With  a  sound  system  of  public  responsibility,  entire 
freedom,  organised  clubs,  the  habit  of  complete  public- 
ity, the  body  of  the  people  will  exercise  an  ample 
general  control.  But,  in  the  main,  under  the  influence 
of  a  healthy  education,  they  will  be  content  with  seeing 
that  the  work  is  well  done,  rather  than  insist  on  doing 
it  themselves.  If  government  were  in  a  healthy  state, 
and  the  people  thoroughly  educated  intellectually  and 
morally,  if  the  sphere  of  government  were  strictly 
limited,  and  incapable  of  abuse  by  having  no  coercive 
power,  we  should  as  little  hear  of  persons  insisting  on 
governing  themselves  as  of  making  their  own  boots 
and  shoes. 


1 82  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

There  is  an  enormous  fallacy  involved  in  the  for- 
mulae about  people  governing  themselves.  Strictly 
speaking,  such  a  thing  is  impossible.  It  usually 
means  that  some  govern  the  rest,  usually  one  or  very 
few  govern  certain  groups,  and  then  one  out  of  several 
groups  gains  the  ascendency  for  a  time.  Government 
means  taking  some  one  definite  course  out  of  a  hun- 
dred. That  one  definite  course  in  any  complex  case 
must  originate  in  one  directing  mind,  which  impresses 
other  leading  minds,  and  these  obtain  the  assent  of 
more  or  less  powerful  groups,  and  ultimately  one  of 
these  groups  becomes  strong  enough  to  compel  the 
more  or  less  reluctant  acquiescence  of  the  rest.  All 
government  and  all  legislation,  whether  the  govern- 
ment be  that  of  a  parliament,  or  of  a  tzar,  or  of  a 
president  elected  by  universal  suffrage,  means  ulti- 
mately the  will  of  some  one,  acquiesced  in  by  over- 
whelming numbers.  The  despotism  of  the  Tzar  or 
the  Sultan  means  that  the  decision  of  a  ruler  invested 
with  divine  right  is  supported  by  the  superstitious 
reverence  of  a  body  of  people  strong  enough  and  or- 
ganised well  enough  to  sweep  down  any  opposition, 
the  millions  paying  imperial  taxes,  and  submitting  to 
enter  the  imperial  army  without  a  murmur.  The 
government  of  a  parliamentary  party  means  that  what 
the  prime  minister  thinks  it  wise  and  feasible  to  do, 
he  induces  his  ministry  to  accept,  and  after  a  great 
deal  of  talk  and  compromise,  the  Parliament  assents 
to  the  measures,  or  Lord  Rosebery  retires  and  Lord 
Salisbury  carries  his  bills.  That  is  much  the  same 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  183 

with  President  McKinley  in  the  United  States  or  M. 
Loubet  in  the  French  Republic.  There  is  no  essential 
difference  between  all  five  cases.  The  people  govern 
themselves  strictly  neither  in  America,  France,  nor 
England,  any  more  than  Russia  or  Turkey.  Ancient 
superstition  in  Russia  and  Turkey  produce  a  more 
absolute  and  imposing  authority  for  the  time.  Lord 
Rosebery  and  Lord  Salisbury  are  liable  to  be  checked 
and  put  out  of  office  by  Parliament  or  a  general  election. 
Tzars  and  Sultans  are  liable  to  be  blown  up  by  Nihilists 
or  strangled  by  conspirators,  and  they  have  just  as 
much  trouble  with  students,  ministers,  and  Ulemas  as 
any  prime  minister  with  Parliament. 

The  future,  we  may  be  sure,  will  reduce  the  natural 
functions  of  Parliaments  to  those  of  inquiry,  financial 
control,  and  legislation  pure  and  simple,  the  elected 
Parliament  meeting  for  moderate  sessions  at  regular 
intervals,  and  having  withdrawn  from  it  administra- 
tive work,  the  supervision  of  ministerial  routine,  and 
any  power  to  overthrow  a  ministry  by  a  single  vote. 
The  presidential  form  of  government,  as  recognised 
in  the  United  States  and  partly  in  France,  is  a  more 
natural  type  of  government  —  the  president  being 
directly  responsible  to  the  body  of  the  people,  appoint- 
ing his  own  ministers,  without  any  limitation  of  his 
choice  to  members  of  Parliament,  or  parliamentary 
approval.  It  is  a  vain  bugbear  to  raise  a  cry  of  dicta- 
torship. It  is  simply  efficient  government  with  direct 
responsibility;  the  indirect  responsibility  to  Parliament 
only  tends  to  neutralise  and  falsify  public  opinion. 


184  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

The  Utopia  of  good  government,  then,  would  be, 
that,  all  hereditary  and  class  institutions  being  elimi- 
nated, the  sphere  of  government  strictly  limited,  and 
a  universal  education  being  established,  the  people 
would  be  content  to  trust  the  temporal  management 
of  material  interests  to  trained  experts  subject  to  those 
conditions :  — 

1.  That  the  government  have    no    great  military 
force  to  compel  obedience. 

2.  That  their  measures  and  appointments  shall  be 
submitted  to  ample  public  review  before  they  are  finally 
ratified. 

3.  That  complete  freedom  of  speech  and  criticism 
be  a  strict  sine  qua  non. 

4.  That  the  budget  be  voted  by  a  chamber  elected 
by  manhood  suffrage. 

5.  That  the  government  be  directly  responsible  and 
removable  by  proper  machinery,  but  not  by  a  chance 
vote  of  a  miscellaneous  assembly. 

The  essential  difference  between  the  ideals  pro- 
pounded by  Positivism  and  those  of  any  despotic  or 
any  revolutionary  school  are  these  :  The  Positivist 
ideal  would  tend  to  reduce  the  authority  of  govern- 
ment whilst  greatly  enlarging  the  power  of  public 
opinion.  The  despotic  and  revolutionary  schemes 
aim  at  getting  into  their  own  hands  the  whole  existing 
force  of  governments,  in  order  to  set  up  institutions 
even  more  violent,  arbitrary,  and  pitiless  than  those 
which  exist.  Positivism  equally  repudiates  the  tyranny 
of  tzar,  emperor,  demagogue,  or  Nihilist.  It  is 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  185 

wholly  neutral  as  between  the  Black  Terror  and  the 
Red  Terror.  It  protests  equally  against  both  in  the 
name  of  humanity  —  past,  present,  and  to  come.  It 
rejects  the  claim  of  Romanoffs,  Bonapartes,  Hohen- 
zollerns,  Bourbons,  or  Guelphs  to  crush  society  in 
the  mill  of  divine  right  and  supernatural  revelation. 
Nor  can  it  recognise  any  kindred  right  in  revolution- 
ists to  enforce  their  own  crudities  and  dogmas  on 
humanity  at  large.  It  refuses  to  place  the  interests 
of  Humanity,  past,  present,  and  to  come,  at  the 
mercy  of  a  majority  of  the  male  adults  of  any  nation 
for  the  moment.  The  male  adult  voters  in  any  country 
are  always  a  minority  of  a  minority  in  any  population  ; 
and  it  is  a  mere  metaphysical  figment  that  they  have 
any  moral  claim  to  recast  society  by  a  vote. 

The  interests  of  human  society  are  those  which 
humanity  has  created  after  about  fifty  thousand  years 
of  toil ;  the  institutions  which  the  genius,  labours,  and 
martyrdom  of  myriads  of  men  and  women  have  slowly 
built  up  ;  the  interests  of  the  living  children  and  minors 
who  are  always  a  majority  of  the  population,  and  the 
interests  of  the  vaster  majority  of  unborn  children  in 
the  infinite  ages  to  come.  Positivism  refuses  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  resort  to  bayonets  or  police  in  any  form 
(be  the  agents  of  State  authority  adorned  with  eagles 
or  with  caps  of  liberty),  to  impose  on  human  life  any 
kind  of  institutions  by  State  authority.  And  it  is  so 
completely  sincere  in  this  refusal,  that  it  would  refuse 
with  horror  to  have  even  its  own  programme  or  insti- 
tutions imposed  by  State  intervention. 


1 86  REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY 

The  social  evils  of  society  do  need  a  complete  reor- 
ganisation, but  by  moral,  religious,  and  intellectual 
agencies,  and  on  these  the  physical  force  revolutionists 
have  even  less  to  offer  us  than  the  reactionists.  We 
do  most  assuredly  need  a  higher  code  of  duty,  more 
social  and  less  selfish  habits,  a  deeper  and  more  moral 
education.  But  it  is  no  more  in  the  power  of  a  ter- 
rorist than  of  a  despot  to  decree  virtue  and  good  citi- 
zenship. The  Positivist  ideal  of  the  republic  is  one 
in  which  these  —  the  main  ends  of  social  life  —  are 
attained  by  moral  means,  by  religious  training,  by  edu- 
cation, by  an  intensely  active  social  opinion.  The  main 
work  of  Positivism,  the  main  instrument  of  humanity 
in  the  future,  is  education,  in  the  highest  and  widest 
sense  of  the  term.  The  State,  or  material  system  of 
external  order,  is  merely  the  condition,  the  preliminary 
ground,  for  this  education.  The  State  has  to  defend, 
protect,  sanitate,  and  beautify  the  conditions  of  civic 
life.  It  must  keep  order,  promote  health,  comfort,  en- 
joyment, good  citizenship,  by  suppressing  nuisances 
and  all  overgrown  or  anti-social  forces,  to  prevent 
citizens  or  groups  from  encroaching  on  the  free  life  of 
other  citizens. 

A  truly  industrial,  peaceful,  cultured,  and  free  life 
cannot  be  imposed  by  any  kind  of  armed  force  or 
arbitrary  law.  These  institutions  must  grow,  spon- 
taneously and  normally.  The  republic,  reduced  to 
a  manageable  size  and  population,  freed  from  all  war- 
like ambition  and  from  all  fear  of  attack  from  its  neigh- 
bours, will  have  little  to  do  but  to  allow  the  moral  and 


REPUBLICANISM    AND    DEMOCRACY  187 

intellectual  life  of  its  citizens  to  develop  in  a  healthy 
way,  to  prevent  the  encroachment  of  any  on  the  lives 
and  labours  of  others,  and  to  furnish  forth  the  material 
life  of  all  with  adequate  means.  The  citizens  will  not 
want  to  burn  down  capitals,  to  blow  up  public  build- 
ings, to  have  a  revolution  once  every  ten  years,  in  order 
to  secure  these  ends.  They  will  be. willing  to  intrust 
power  to  really  capable  hands,  watching,  supervising, 
the  way  in  which  these  functions  are  performed,  dis- 
cussing the  way  they  are  performed,  making  their  own 
wants,  complaints,  and  suggestions  plainly  heard,  ready, 
if  need  be,  to  take  the  authorised  modes  of  replacing 
these  functionaries,  —  if  they  prove  finally  untrust- 
worthy,— but  not  eternally  correcting  and  embarrassing 
them,  and  not  insisting  on  having  every  petty  detail, 
whether  of  administration  or  legislation,  voted  on  word 
by  word  in  public  and  settled  in  furious  party  contests. 
Such  is  the  ideal  of  the  republic  —  an  ideal  not 
applicable  perhaps,  hardly  likely  to  be  considered  either 
to-day  or  to-morrow.  For  it  is  an  ideal  which  assumes, 
as  its  antecedent  condition,  the  existence  of  a  living 
religion  of  humanity. 


PERSONAL   REMINISCENCES 


Personal   Reminiscences 

A  LECTURE  GIVEN  AT   THE  WOMEN'S   COLLEGE,   BRYN  MAWR, 
PENNSYLVANIA 

I  AM  told  by  the  distinguished  president  of  this 
learned  body  that  you  would  rather  hear  me  talk  about 
some  of  the  famous  men  and  women  of  Europe  whom 
I  have  known,  than  listen  to  a  set  discourse  on  any 
general  or  historical  subject.  I  am  very  willing  to  tell 
you  what  I  remember ;  but  I  fear  you  can  hardly  be 
aware  of  the  garrulity  and  egoism  to  which  we  seniors 
are  prone,  when  invited  to  draw  upon  our  memory 
of  the  past.  Touching,  as  I  do,  on  the  term  of  life 
assigned  by  the  Psalmist  to  the  natural  man,  I  can 
look  back  with  a  melancholy  joy  on  the  striking  scenes 
I  have  witnessed  and  the  eminent  persons  I  have 
known.  And  it  will  be  your  fault  if  you  tempt  me 
to  be  guilty  of  a  loquacity  that  may  exhaust  your 
patience.  Remember,  that  in  speaking  of  myself,  I 
am  acting  only  as  a  photographic  plate,  or  a  telephone 
instrument,  to  record  impressions  and  to  transmit 
words.  And  if  I  find  anything  to  say  that  may  be 
new  to  you,  it  is  no  merit  or  ingenuity  of  mine,  but 
the  simple  accident  that  I  was  born  in  England  in  the 
reign  of  King  William  IV,  whilst  you  have  lived  in 
America,  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

191 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 


I  was  born,  I  say,  under  King  William  IV  ;  and 
one  of  my  early  reminiscences  is  the  coming  home  of 
my  father  from  London  with  the  news  that  "  the  King 
is  dead."  I  was  building  a  house  of  wooden  bricks 
on  the  floor,  and  jumped  up  and  asked  —  "  Who  is 
King  now  ?  "  When  I  was  told  that  there  was  no 
King,  but  that  Victoria  was  Queen,  I  thought  that  a 
very  poor  end  for  a  nation  which  had  won  the  battle 
of  Waterloo,  and  regretted  that  we  had  no  Salic  law 
in  England.  Do  not  laugh.  Boys  begin  like  that,  as 
girls  begin  by  thinking  boys  a  mistake.  But  I  was 
reconciled  to  a  queen  reigning  over  us,  when  I  was 
taken  up  to  London  to  see  the  Coronation. 

I  shall  never  forget  that  day,  which  remains  on  my 
memory  more  vividly  perhaps  than  any  day  of  my 
life.  I  was  a  child  brought  up  quietly  in  the  coun- 
try, and  it  was  my  first  experience  of  the  vast  city 
and  the  great  world.  Some  of  my  family  were  in  the 
Abbey,  and  I  was  placed  in  a  window  looking  on 
Palace  Yard,  from  which  I  could  see  the  procession, 
the  troops,  and  the  crowds.  I  was  deeply  stirred  by 
the  masses  of  people,  the  equipages,  the  lines  of  sol- 
diers, the  force,  the  order,  and  the  pageant  of  a  great 
national  ceremony.  I  remember  Victoria  in  the  bloom 
of  her  youth,  and  all  the  fascination  of  a  girl  queen 
entering  on  the  rule  of  so  mighty  a  kingdom.  I 
eagerly  watched  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  the  Marquis 
of  Anglesey,  who  lost  his  leg  at  Waterloo,  Marshal 
Soult  who  represented  France,  and  Prince  Esterhazy, 
who  was  the  Austrian  envoy.  Nor  can  I  forget  the 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 


Lord  Mayor  of  London,  in  his  painted  and  gilded 
coach,  for  he  happened  that  year  to  be  my  own  god- 
father. I  remember  questioning  a  huge  life  guardsman 
if  he  had  killed  many  Frenchmen  at  Waterloo.  (I 
rather  jumped  the  interval  of  twenty-three  years.) 
I  inquired  about  the  respective  rank  of  the  generals, 
courtiers,  ministers,  and  judges,  and  could  not  decide 
whether  I  intended  to  be  ultimately  the  successor  of 
the  Prime  Minister  or  of  the  Lord  Chancellor.  That 
memorable  day  and  its  visions  gave  me  my  first  defi- 
nite interest  in  public  affairs  and  the  organisation  of  a 
State.  I  often  think  with  gratitude  on  the  good  sense 
of  my  father  who  took  the  trouble  to  give  such  an 
opportunity  of  education  to  a  child  of  six. 

Later  on,  when  I  had  come  to  live  in  London,  of 
course  I  often  saw  the  Queen,  Prince  Albert,  and  the 
royal  family,  the  old  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  would 
ride  down  Piccadilly  in  white  duck  trousers,  tumbling 
about  on  his  horse's  back  in  a  strange  way,  ever  rais- 
ing his  hand  to  acknowledge  the  salutes  of  all  who 
passed.  I  used  to  see  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston,  Lord  Derby,  and  the  ministers  of  their  time, 
Disraeli,  Napoleon  III,  the  Tsar  Nicholas,  and  the 
foreign  royalties  who  came  to  our  country.  But  as  I 
never  spoke  to  any  of  these  exalted  personages  I  need 
trouble  you  no  longer  with  their  names  ;  and  I  will 
only  say  that  they  were  all  extremely  like  the  portraits 
and  engravings  of  them  we  know  so  well,  and  were 
even  still  more  like  the  wonderful  caricatures  of  them 
we  may  see  in  the  old  numbers  of  the  London  Punch. 


194  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

I  have  taken  you  back  for  more  than  sixty  years  to 
remind  you  of  all  the  enormous  changes  that  have 
been  introduced  into  the  material  side  of  life  within 
my  own  lifetime.  At  my  birth  the  locomotive  had 
only  just  been  invented,  and  the  new  police  and  cabs 
were  on  the  first,  trial  in  London ;  but  there  were 
no  railroads  at  all  except  in  the  northern  corners  of 
England,  no  ocean  steamers,  no  telegraph  but  the 
semaphore,  no  cheap  post,  no  electric  light  or  other 
apparatus,  and  slaveholding  existed  in  British  colonies. 
You  may  think  that  life  was  not  worth  living  under 
such  conditions.  I  can  assure  you  that  life  was  quite 
as  pleasant.  You  could  walk  in  an  hour  from  the 
heart  of  London  into  delicious  meadows  and  woods, 
and  we  wrote  a  letter  not  oftener  than  twice  in  a  week. 
But  what  will  surprise  you  is,  that  our  life  sixty  years 
ago  was  essentially  quite  the  same  as  it  is  to-day, 
except  that  the  pace  was  more  deliberate  and  the  leisure 
greater.  We  travelled  abroad,  read  good  books,  en- 
joyed society,  theatres,  music,  pictures,  games,  very 
much  as  you  do  now,  though  perhaps  with  somewhat 
less  scrambling  and  elbowing  of  each  other,  and  with- 
out any  wish  to  be  for  ever  "breaking  the  record  "  or 
our  own  hearts.  And  the  moral  that  a  septuagenarian 
might  draw  from  the  contrast  is  that  we*were  quite  as 
happy  as  you  are,  and  not  so  very  much  inferior  even 
as  men  and  women. 

But  my  business  is  to  talk  to  you  of  the  men  and 
women  whom  I  have  known  ;  and  I  cannot  begin 
better  than  with  one  who  was  loved  and  admired  in 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  195 

America  —  I  mean  John  Bright.  I  have  heard  some 
of  his  finest  speeches,  and  to  my  mind,  he  was  far  the 
grandest  orator  of  our  time.  The  power  of  his  oratory 
lay  not  in  eloquence  or  splendour  of  diction,  in  the 
vulgar  sense,  but  in  the  touching  simplicity  with  which 
he  went  home  to  the  right  sense  and  generous  sympa- 
thies of  true  men.  When  he  welcomed  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  on  his  visit  to  London  in  1867,  when  he 
sprang  to  his  feet  in  St.  James'  Hall  to  rebuke  a  mem- 
ber of  Parliament  who  had  insulted  the  Queen  in  a 
Reform  meeting,  when  he  described  the  silent  cere- 
mony of  a  Quaker's  funeral,  he  impressed  us  with  the 
religious  solemnity  of  an  apostle  and  with  the  pathos 
of  poetry  such  as  we  feel  in  the  lyrics  of  Burns  or  of 
Wordsworth.  I  was  at  times  associated  with  him  in 
committees,  meetings,  and  social  and  political  move- 
ments, where  his  sterling  judgment  and  his  manly 
spirit  guided  many  a  cause.  And  I  had  frequent 
opportunities  of  talking  to  him  at  clubs  and  social 
gatherings,  where  he  was  conspicuous  for  genial  hu- 
mour and  keen  insight.  John  Bright  was  hardly  sur- 
passed as  a  causeur  in  his  time.  He  retained  to  the 
last  the  tone  and  manner  of  the  simple  provincial 
Quaker.  I  remember  his  taking  me  about  the  streets 
and  squares  of  the  West  End  one  fine  night  in  July, 
when  we  left  a  dinner  party  at  Lord  Houghton's,  ask- 
ing about  all  the  great  houses  and  crowded  balls  we 
passed  with  the  amused  curiosity  of  a  country  girl,  and 
telling  me  a  string  of  interesting  anecdotes  of  his  own 
youth  and  his  own  self-education  in  default  of  all  aca- 
demic training. 


196  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

Richard  Cobden  I  heard  in  one  of  the  most  strik- 
ing examples  of  successful  oratory  that  even  he  ever 
achieved.  In  1857  Lord  Palmerston  suddenly  dis- 
solved Parliament  and  appealed  to  the  nation  to  sup- 
port him  against  the  Peace  party  in  one  of  his  wanton 
wars  on  China.  He  challenged  Cobden  and  his  friends 
to  hold  a  public  meeting  in  London,  which  even  then 
was  entering  on  its  career  of  what  we  now  call  Jingo- 
ism. Cobden,  Roebuck,  and  Layard  held  an  open 
meeting  to  protest  against  a  policy  of  war.  For  a  long 
time  the  meeting,  packed  with  supporters  of  the  gov- 
ernment, drowned  the  voice  of  the  speakers  with  inter- 
ruptions and  noise,  and  Mr.  Cobden  himself  was 
received  with  an  outburst  of  opposition.  Time  after 
time  he  waited,  cool  and  smiling,  for  the  storm  to  abate, 
but  every  sentence  was  cut  short  by  violent  tumults. 
At  last  he  was  able  to  finish  a  sentence  or  two  of 
homely  wisdom,  and  even  to  get  a  feeble  cheer  from  a 
few  friends.  Again  and  again  he  was  stopped  and 
hooted ;  but  at  last  he  won  over  his  hearers  step  by 
step.  The  cheers  grew  louder  and  more  frequent; 
till  at  the  end,  he  convinced  the  meeting  of  the  justice 
of  his  cause,  and  he  sat  down  amidst  repeated  volleys 
of  hearty  cheering. 

I  have  often  heard  Gladstone  both  in  Parliament 
and  on  the  platform  ;  but  I  doubt  if  he  quite  equalled 
Bright  in  majestic  imagery  as  an  orator,  or,  in  convinc- 
ing logic  and  unanswerable  facts,  quite  equalled  Richard 
Cobden.  Gladstone,  of  course,  was  immensely  superior 
to  both  of  them  in  range  of  experience,  in  constructive 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  197 

power,  and  in  the  management  of  men.  As  I  fre- 
quently met  Mr.  Gladstone  in  society,  both  in  and  out 
of  office,  and  at  times  have  stayed  for  days  with  him 
in  a  country  house,  I  had  abundant  opportunity  to 
observe  his  extraordinary  versatility  and  the  range  of 
his  reading,  the  rapidity  with  which  he  was  wont  to 
master  intricate  detail,  his  consummate  command  of 
every  resource,  and  his  beautiful  courtesy  of  nature  and 
considerate  forbearance  with  all  men. 

If  I  were  asked  to  pick  out  the  three  personal  char- 
acteristics in  which  Mr.  Gladstone  surpassed  all  the 
eminent  men  of  his  time,  I  should  choose  the  follow- 
ing out  of  his  great  union  of  diverse  qualities.  With 
a  fiery  spirit  at  bottom  and  a  singularly  masterful 
nature,  he  had  a  strange  power  of  curbing  himself  at 
need  and  of  keeping  a  cool  head  in  the  exuberance  of 
his  own  oratory.  Next,  it  was  almost  impossible  to 
find  any  topic  or  incident  into  which  he  could  not 
fling  himself  with  interest  and  master  it  with  rapidity. 
Lastly,  of  all  men  involved  in  a  multitude  of  distract- 
ing cares,  he  had  the  most  marvellous  faculty  of  keep- 
ing his  mind  concentrated  on  the  immediate  point  in 
hand. 

I  have  seen  him,  when  Prime  Minister  in  arduous 
times,  unbend  his  thoughts  in  easy  society,  so  as  to 
engage  the  first  girl  or  child  at  hand  in  gossip  about 
the  most  trivial  things  that  occupied  their  lives.  I 
remember  the  committee  of  a  society  of  which  he  was 
Trustee  calling  him  in  to  recommend  a  purchase  they 
were  proposing  for  acceptance  to  the  body  of  the 


198  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

members.  In  twenty  minutes,  Mr.  Gladstone  mas- 
tered the  details  and  the  figures  of  the  transaction  quite 
as  fully  as  the  committee  which  had  been  studying 
them  for  three  months.  He  left  the  committee  room 
not  quite  convinced  that  the  intended  purchase  was  a 
good  investment;  but  as  the  discussion  went  on  in  full 
meeting  he  completed  his  calculations  and  decided  that 
it  was.  At  length  he  rose,  and  opening  with  great 
deliberation,  he  stated  all  the  points  to  be  urged,  both 
pro  and  contra,  with  extreme  fairness,  and  left  his 
hearers  almost  uncertain  of  his  own  bias.  Gradually 
he  warmed  to  the  task,  and  seemed  to  be  convincing 
himself  whilst  he  convinced  his  audience,  that  the  pur- 
chase would  be  good.  He  spoke  for  some  time  and 
ended  by  recommending  the  transaction  with  such  en- 
ergy that  no  doubt  was  left,  and  the  proposal  was  car- 
ried. In  the  result,  it  has  proved  to  be  a  great  success. 
I  remember  that  in  the  house  of  one  of  his  col- 
leagues, when  he  was  Prime  Minister,  I  was  thrust  for- 
ward, somewhat  unwisely  by  our  host,  to  make  an 
appeal  to  Mr.  Gladstone  on  a  public  question,  which 
was  almost  a  kind  of  remonstrance.  For  a  moment 
he  turned  round  on  me  with  the  look  of  an  old  lion 
disturbed  over  a  meal,  as  he  not  unnaturally  resented 
what  seemed  an  intrusion  on  my  part.  I  showed  him 
at  once  that  I  was  entirely  innocent  of  any  presump- 
tuous wish  to  volunteer  my  opinion,  and  was  simply 
requested  by  his  colleagues  to  inform  him  of  a  fact 
within  my  own  knowledge  that  he  ought  to  know. 
In  an  instant  every  sign  of  impatience  had  left  him, 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  199 

and  he  invited  me  to  speak  of  what  I  knew  with  the 
sweetest  courtesy  and  kindness. 

In  the  power  of  becoming  absorbed  in  the  matter 
before  him,  and  excluding  all  outside  interests  for  the 
time  being,  Mr.  Gladstone  had  no  rival  in  our  age. 
He  reminded  us  of  the  old  stories  how  Archimedes 
solved  an  abstruse  problem  in  his  bath  and  then  ran 
home  shouting  Eureka^  quite  forgetting  to  put  on  his 
clothes ;  how  he  was  killed  by  the  soldiers  of  Metellus 
whilst  poring  over  his  diagrams;  or  how  Descartes, 
in  abstruse  meditation,  walked  into  the  lines  of  the 
enemy  in  war.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  certainly  not  an 
"absent-minded"  statesman;  but  his  power  of  abstract- 
ing his  thoughts  from  all  but  the  one  matter  in  hand, 
greatly  increased  his  energy,  though  it  was  often  inju- 
rious to  that  all-round  watchfulness  which  is  essential 
to  the  minister  charged  with  the  complicated  demands 
of  a  great  empire.  I  have  heard  that  in  the  midst  of 
great  political  crises,  when  the  existence  of  the  party 
hung  on  some  decision  of  the  Cabinet,  he  would  be 
absorbed  in  some  new  book  on  Homer,  or  church 
history,  or  the  life  of  a  college  friend,  until  the  hour 
of  the  meeting  of  council  had  actually  struck. 

We  shall  know  all  about  Mr.  Gladstone  very  soon 
(I  hope  within  the  year)  when  we  have  the  Life  by 
Mr.  John  Morley,  for  which  the  world  has  so  long 
been  looking  with  expectation.  It  is  a  fortunate  con- 
junction of  events  that  the  biography  of  our  illustrious 
statesman  should  have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  one  of 
his  colleagues,  his  close  friend  and  confidant,  who  is 


200  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

at  the  same  time  one  of  the  chiefs  of  English  letters. 
No  politician  knew  Mr.  Gladstone's  mind  for  the  later 
part  of  his  career  so  intimately  as  John  Morley;  no 
English  writer  could  so  fitly  expound  it  to  the  world. 
What  would  we  not  have  given  if  Milton  had  written 
a  Life  of  Cromwell  —  or  Swift  that  of  Walpole  —  or 
Burke  that  of  Pitt  ?  The  great  writer  and  the  great 
statesman  do  not  often  live  in  the  same  world  ;  and 
when  they  do,  they  are  seldom  bound  together  with 
the  same  sympathies  and  kindred  ideas. 

As  to  Mr.  John  Morley  himself,  I  am  not  going  to 
tell  you  anything.  He  has  been  my  close  friend  for 
some  thirty-five  years ;  and  happily  he  has  still,  we 
trust,  to  add  to  his  great  record  and  to  complete  his 
career.  Of  living  persons  I  shall  not  speak,  for  I 
might  have  to  express  some  difference  of  opinion  or  to 
attribute  to  them  something  they  would  hasten  to  dis- 
claim. There  is  no  known  rule  such  as  de  vivis  nil  nisi 
bonum.  So  anything  that  might  occur  to  me  to  say  as  to 
such  famous  persons  as  Lord  Rosebery  and  Sir  William 
Harcourt,  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Chamberlain,  will  have 
to  be  remitted  to  my  literary  executors — if  ever  I  were 
to  become  in  my  old  age  so  garrulous  and  so  silly  as  to 
presume  to  name  literary  executors  at  all. 

I  turn  then  to  the  illustrious  thinkers  and  writers 
with  whom  I  have  been  privileged  to  speak,  —  men 
and  women  whose  names  are  household  words  in 
America  as  in  Europe.  Not  that  I  shall  presume  to 
pass  any  judgment  upon  them  or  to  weigh  their  influ- 
ence, but  simply  to  tell  you  in  a  few  personal  touches 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  201 

how  they  looked  and  seemed  in  the  flesh  to  one  who 
had  the  good  fortune  to  be  admitted  to  their  presence. 
Virgilium  vidi  tantum :  and  I  will  try  and  tell  you  how 
he  struck  me. 

I  did  not  see  Carlyle  until  he  was  an  old  man,  after 
the  death  of  his  wife,  living  in  retirement.  A  more 
dignified,  courteous,  and  friendly  senior  it  was  impos- 
sible to  imagine.  He  sate  by  his  simple  fireside,  in 
the  house  in  which  he  lived  for  forty-six  years,  and 
poured  out  Latter-day  Pamphlets  with  great  energy 
and  strong  Lowland  accent.  The  effect  was  startling. 
He  was  exactly  like  all  his  portraits —  the  Whistler  is 
the  best  both  in  art  and  in  likeness  —  the  words  were 
strangely  the  same  as  he  used  in  his  fiercest  hour, 
nay  even  exceeding  this,  for  he  wished  that  many 
people  and  things  "might  all  be  dawmed  doun  to 
hale "  —  so  that  it  seemed  an  illusion,  as  if  some 
wraith  of  Sartor  had  been  summoned  up  to  give  a 
mocking  presentation  of  the  prophet.  He  said  what 
he  had  so  often  said,  till  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  he  were 
repeating  thoughts  which  were  graven  in  his  memory. 
His  bonhommie,  his  fire,  his  friendly  manners  struck 
me  deeply.  Once  I  called  on  him  at  the  request  of 
Madame  Michelet  to  ask  him  to  subscribe  to  the 
monument  in  Paris  of  Jules  Michelet,  which  he  will- 
ingly did,  speaking  of  the  historian  with  honour  and 
friendship. 

He  was  surprised  to  learn  that  I  was  a  lawyer  in 
practice.  This  he  regretted,  and  he  urged  me  to  turn 
to  letters,  which  did  not  seem  to  me  very  wise  advice, 


2O2  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

as  I  had  other  interests  and  duties  apart  from  letters 
or  from  law.  For  himself  he  told  me  cheerfully  and 
quietly  that  his  work  was  done,  and  he  was  waiting 
for  the  end,  though  at  that  time  he  was  vigorous  and 
able,  with  colour  in  his  cheek  and  light  in  his  eye. 
The  last  time  I  ever  saw  him  was  in  the  year  of  his 
death ;  he  was  still  able  to  walk  slowly  near  his  house, 
but  he  groaned  heavily  over  the  burden  of  life, 
and  longed  to  be  at  rest  for  ever  with  his  kin  in 
Annandale,  strictly  refusing  a  tomb  in  the  Abbey. 

The  two  Englishmen,  who  have  held  the  widest 
European  reputation,  —  Charles  Darwin  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  —  are  alike  in  this.  Both  reached  extreme 
old  age,  though  both,  in  a  large  part  of  their  lives, 
were  greatly  hampered  by  very  delicate  health,  per- 
mitting but  a  very  restricted  and  intermittent  study. 
As  to  the  use  of  books,  it  is  probable  that  few  men  of 
studious  lives  have  spent  so  small  a  part  of  their  time 
in  actual  reading.  The  right  choice  of  books,  the 
understanding  of  what  they  read,  has  done  more  for 
both  of  these  thinkers  than  the  midnight  oil  consumed 
over  a  library.  It  is  genius,  not  omnivorous  reading 
which  makes  the  creative  thinker.  Darwin's  concep- 
tions, which  have  revolutionised  the  thought  of  the 
world,  were  based  on  what  he  saw,  on  reports  of  com- 
petent observers,  but  mainly  on  his  own  marvellous 
power  of  coordinating  disparate  facts  in  the  natural 
world.  I  remember  him  as  the  most  courteous,  sim- 
ple, and  retiring  of  men,  wholly  unconscious,  it  would 
seem,  of  his  own  vast  reputation,  and  of  such  painful 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  203 

delicacy  of  bodily  frame  and  of  such  intense  nervous 
sensitiveness,  that  he  could  not  endure  conversation 
even  within  his  family  circle  for  more  than  a  limited 
time. 

That  Herbert  Spencer  should  have  produced  his 
Synthetic  Philosophy,  and  all  his  other  works  with  the 
scanty  time  which  his  health  has  permitted  him  to 
give  to  books,  is  even  more  extraordinary  than  the 
case  of  Darwin,  whose  work  lay  largely  in  physical 
observation.  Huxley  once  told  me  that  of  all  men 
he  had  ever  known,  Spencer  was  supreme  in  the 
power  to  assimilate  knowledge  from  the  brains  of 
competent  students.  I  venture  to  assert  that  no 
thinker  of  his  calibre  has  wasted  so  little  time  on 
mere  reading,  which  should  be  a  warning  to  those 
who  fancy  that  learning  can  take  the  place  of  brains. 
Mr.  Spencer's  life  for  some  fifty  years  has  been  a 
model  of  single-minded  devotion  to  a  great  philo- 
sophic career.  His  resolute  purpose  to  live  his  own 
life  without  hindrance  from  society,  or  distractions,  or 
pursuit  of  fortune,  fame,  or  rank ;  his  unbending 
consistency  and  assertion  of  right  and  justice  ;  his  fer- 
vid enthusiasm  for  the  cause  of  Peace,  Industry,  and 
Civilisation,  form  a  spotless  record  in  English  letters. 

Those  who  have  known  Mr.  Spencer  as  a  friend,  as 
it  has  been  my  privilege  to  do,  in  spite  of  occasional 
literary  combats  and  personal  "  difficulties,"  have  rea- 
son to  honour  his  stern  independence  of  character  and 
scrupulous  equity,  his  noble  simplicity  of  life,  and  his 
affectionate  regard  for  the  friends  of  a  lifetime.  The 


2O4  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

intellectual  and  moral  sympathies  that  so  long  united 
Spencer,  Lewes,  and  George  Eliot  were  a  singular 
advantage  to  all  three,  and  are  memorable  in  the 
records  of  English  philosophy  and  literature.  Three 
persons,  with  gifts  and  natures  so  widely  different,  lived 
together  for  many  years  in  close  intimacy  and  mutual 
respect.  In  looking  back  over  the  celebrities  of  the 
English  world  in  the  last  half  century,  it  is  a  pleasure 
to  think  that  in  Herbert  Spencer  we  have  still  living 
the  foremost  philosopher  of  our  time,  a  staunch  apostle 
of  humanity  and  the  moral  law  which  our  age  seems 
willing  to  forswear. 

Thomas  Huxley  I  used  often  to  hear  as  a  lecturer, 
to  meet  in  society  and  at  the  debates  of  the  Meta- 
physical Society.  As  a  lecturer  he  was  simply  perfect : 
clear,  incisive,  illuminating,  admirably  adapting  his 
words  to  the  calibre  of  his  audience.  If  he  and  I  had 
sparring  matches  in  the  press  or  face  to  face,  it  was  only 
an  incident  which  I  shared  in  common  with  others 
of  every  school  and  of  any  opinion.  Huxley  was  a 
born  controversialist, — "  a  first-class  fighting  man,"  — 
whether  the  subject  were  science,  theology,  or  meta- 
physics, and  his  skill  as  a  debater  has  no  doubt  given 
a  somewhat  artificial  rank  to  his  purely  scientific  work. 
Personally,  as  his  letters  and  the  memoir  by  his  son 
would  show,  he  was  a  brilliant  companion,  and  if  the 
objects  of  his  attacks  were  seldom  delighted  with  his 
vivacity,  his  many  friends  and  the  bystanders  greatly 
enjoyed  it.  He  would  fly  at  a  Positivist  with  even 
more  zest  than  at  a  bishop  ;  nor  did  he  always  observe 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  205 

the  rule  laid  down  by  Justice  Stephen,  one  of  his  col- 
leagues in  the  Metaphysical  Society,  that  "  dog  should 
not  bite  dog  !  "  Huxley  was  always  ready  to  go  for 
mastiff,  bulldog,  or  terrier.  He  was  proud  of  having 
added  the  term  Agnostic  to  the  language  of  philoso- 
phy;  and  he  never  seemed  to  learn  that  no  mere  nega- 
tive could  be  a  title  worthy  of  a  serious  philosopher. 

I  have  spoken  of  John  Stuart  Mill  at  such  length 
in  published  pieces  that  I  will  only  now  refer  briefly 
to  my  own  profound  regard  for  his  fine  qualities  and 
immense  acquirements.  No  more  just,  patient,  and 
generous  soul  ever  adorned  our  public  life.  One  had 
to  be  admitted  to  his  intimacy  and  to  association  with 
him  in  the  public  movements,  to  which  the  whole  of 
his  later  life  was  devoted,  to  know  how  warm  a  heart, 
what  fire  of  enthusiasm  lay  covered  up,  like  a  volcano 
under  snow,  beneath  the  dry,  formal,  antiquated  offi- 
cial which  the  world  saw  as  Stuart  Mill.  I  spent  with 
him  the  last  night  I  think  he  passed  in  England,  but 
a  week  or  two  before  his  sudden  death  at  Avignon.  I 
have  visited  his  grave  in  that  most  romantic  of  ceme- 
teries beside  the  rushing  Rhone  and  in  sight  of  the 
huge  palace  of  the  mediaeval  Popes.  And  as  I  medi- 
tated on  the  strange  vicissitudes  of  his  career  and  the 
historic  associations  of  his  last  resting-place,  I  was  filled 
with  regret  that  I  could  not  have  worked  with  him  and 
under  him  in  the  new  organ  of  Reform  which  in  leav- 
ing England  he  had  contemplated  to  found. 

From  philosophers  I  pass  to  poets.  And  the  poet 
of  the  Victorian  era  was  obviously  Tennyson, — just 


206  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

as  Homer  was  "  the  poet "  to  all  Greeks.  I  have  said 
so  much  of  Tennyson,  in  a  published  work  of  mine 
which  bears  his  name  on  its  title  page,  that  I  shall 
only  touch  on  a  few  reminiscences  of  his  person.  In 
person,  I  make  bold  to  say,  Alfred  Tennyson  was  the 
most  striking  and  original  figure  of  the  whole  Victo- 
rian era,  if  not  in  the  whole  gallery  of  British  litera- 
ture. His  noble  stature,  stately  features,  and  unique 
mien,  very  much  heightened  by  unconventional  cloth- 
ing, would  have  made  him  an  object  to  stare  at,  if  he 
ever  appeared  in  any  public  place,  which  he  very  rarely 
did.  I  saw  him  not  seldom  at  the  Metaphysical 
Society,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  founders,  and  also 
in  his  own  beautiful  house  at  Aldworth,  for  I  had  the 
good  fortune  to  occupy  a  cottage  on  the  Blackdown 
within  a  walk  of  his  summer  home. 

When  he  was  in  the  humour  (which  one  must  con- 
fess was  not  always)  he  was  an  admirable  talker,  full 
of  good  stories,  his  memories  of  old  friends  and  strik- 
ing incidents,  quoting  lines  from  the  poets  in  Latin, 
Greek,  Italian,  and  German.  He  was  fond  of  reading 
his  own  poems,  and  I  have  heard  him  recite  the 
"  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  which  he  was  asked 
to  do  for  the  benefit  of  the  survivors.  I  can  never 
forget  the  glorious  roll  of  the  Greek  hexameters  when 
I  have  heard  him  declaim  passages  from  the  Iliad,  as 
he  strolled  about  his  beloved  Down  in  its  mantle  of 
heather  and  fern.  He  once  told  me  how  he  came  to 
write  those  magical  lines  in  the  "  Princess." 

"Tears  —  idle  tears  —  I  know  not  what  they  mean." 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  20J 

He  had  been  wandering  alone,  he  said,  among  the 
ruins  of  Tintern  Abbey,  thinking  of  the  monks  and 
their  solitary  lives  in  the  epoch  of  its  foundation,  and 
then,  looking  up  across  the  Wye,  he  saw  the  harvesters, 
girls,  men,  and  boys  gathering  in  their  crops  in  the  full- 
ness of  life  and  merriment.  And  the  contrast  of  the 
old  world  and  the  new  filled  him  with  emotion,  so  that 
the  lines  came  to  him  as  a  spontaneous  inspiration,  as 
if  he  were  simply  recalling  some  familiar  song  that 
haunted  his  memory. 

Robert  Browning,  for  all  his  original  genius  and  fine 
culture  in  literature,  painting,  and  music,  had  less  of 
the  eccentric  in  him  than  almost  any  famous  man  of 
his  time.  A  man  of  the  world  to  his  finger  tips, 
who  knew  every  one,  went  everywhere,  and  had  seen 
everything,  he  might  pass  as  a  social  lion,  but  not  as  a 
poet,  or  a  genius.  His  animal  spirits,  his  bonhommie, 
his  curious  versatility  and  experience,  made  him  the 
autocrat  of  the  London  dinner  table,  of  which  he  was 
never  the  tyrant  —  or  the  bore.  Dear  old  Browning! 
how  we  all  loved  him  ;  how  we  listened  to  his  anec- 
dotes ;  how  we  enjoyed  his  improvised  "  epitaphs  in 
country  churchyards,"  till  we  broke  into  shouts  of 
laughter  as  we  detected  the  amusing  forgery.  At 
home  in  the  smoking  room  of  a  club,  in  a  lady's  liter- 
ary tea-party,  in  a  drawing-room  concert,  or  in  a  river 
picnic,  he  might  have  passed  for  a  retired  diplomat,  but 
for  his  buoyancy  of  mind  and  brilliancy  of  talk.  His 
heart  was  as  warm,  his  moral  judgment  as  sound  as 
his  genius  was  original. 


208  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

I  have  been  present  at  the  funeral  in  Westminster 
Abbey  of  Darwin,  of  Browning,  of  Tennyson,  and  of 
Gladstone.  All  were  impressive  and  memorable  occa- 
sions ;  but  they  differed  in  tone  and  in  form.  When 
Charles  Darwin  was  laid  hard  by  the  dust  of  Newton, 
to  the  great  majority  of  those  present  he  was  a  great 
name  but  not  a  familiar  person,  and  in  very  rare  cases, 
a  friend.  And  there  was  something  a  little  incongru- 
ous in  the  readiness  of  the  Church  to  chant  its  Requiem 
over  the  bones  of  Evolution.  At  the  burial  of  Tenny- 
son there  was  gathered  together  a  great  and  representa- 
tive company  of  his  devoted  admirers  and  of  English 
thought.  But  in  the  simpler  funeral  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing were  to  be  seen  hundreds  of  men  and  women  whose 
eyes  were  dim  with  the  feeling  that  they  were  parting 
with  a  dear  friend  and  a  delightful  companion.  The 
burial  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was  at  once  a  great  national 
ceremony  and  a  day  of  sincere  mourning  to  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men.  The  Crown,  the  State,  Parlia- 
ment, and  the  public  service  were  all  fully  represented 
with  a  ceremonious  simplicity  of  outward  show  that 
was  so  truly  in  keeping  with  him  they  were  carrying 
to  his  grave.  The  total  absence  of  pageantry  was  as 
impressive  as  the  religious  office  was  pathetic.  And 
to  thousands  within  the  Abbey  as  to  tens  of  thousands 
without,  it  was  a  day  of  real  mourning  and  of  solemn 
thought. 

Of  John  Ruskin  I  have  written  so  many  pieces  that 
I  will  only  add  a  few  words  of  personal  reminiscences. 
I  knew  him  first,  in  the  heyday  of  his  youth  and  fame, 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  2OQ 

forty  years  ago  when  he  was  living  with  his  father  and 
mother  in  their  beautiful  home  at  Denmark  Hill  near 
London.  He  had  finished  the  best  part  of  his  art 
work,  and  was  entering  on  his  social  and  economic 
career  in  the  Cornhill  papers  Unto  this  Last.  I  can 
never  forget  his  high  spirits,  his  enthusiasm,  his  start- 
ling paradoxes,  and  his  beautiful  deference  to  his  aged 
father  —  the  very  model  of  the  "canny,"  practical, 
punctilious  Scot  of  the  old  school.  "  Pray,  talk  to 
John  and  teach  him  to  respect  Political  Economy  ! " 
he  would  say  —  and  then,  "John,  John,  what  non- 
sense ye're  talking !  "  as  John  flew  off  on  some  Shel- 
leian  phantasy  that  the  cautious  senior  could  not  follow. 
He  was  then  teaching  working-men  to  draw  —  and  to 
think  —  in  the  college  founded  by  Frederick  Maurice, 
Tom  Hughes,  Kingsley,  and  William  Morris.  No 
more  brilliant  and  lovable  personality  has  ever  given 
life  to  English  letters. 

From  time  to  time  I  saw  Ruskin  again  and  had 
letters  from  him,  —  often  wise,  ingenious,  affectionate, 
now  and  then  angered  by  some  utterance  of  mine  which 
he  condemned,  and  sometimes  full  of  intense  pathos  and 
despair  over  the  evil  days  on  which  he  thought  him- 
self to  have  fallen.  He  goaded  me  in  Fors  and  by 
private  letters  to  reply  to  his  attacks  on  Darwin,  Mill, 
and  Spencer,  and  at  last  I  did  so  in  the  little  piece  I 
called  Past  and  Present,  in  1876.  The  last  time  that 
I  saw  him,  not  very  long  before  his  death,  was  in  his 
lovely  mountain  home  on  Coniston  Lake,  with  all  the 
fire  and  passion  of  his  soul  burnt  out,  his  look  one  of 


21 0  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

majestic  decay,  as  of  some  venerable  bard  of  a  departed 
age;  gentle,  calm,  simple,  and  surrounded  with  every 
grace  that  nature  and  love  could  give  to  his  last  days. 

The  Life  and  Letters  of  George  Eliot  by  her  husband, 
Mr.  John  Cross,  sufficiently  show  the  intimacy  that  I 
had  the  honour  to  retain  with  our  great  novelist  for 
the  last  twenty  years  of  her  life.  Of  her,  too,  I  have 
already  spoken  more  than  once  in  published  pieces, 
and  I  can  add  nothing  to  all  I  have  said  of  her  noble 
qualities  and  vast  acquirements,  of  her  loyalty  and 
goodness  toward  her  many  friends,  of  the  singularly 
conscientious  thoroughness  with  which  she  poured  her 
whole  life  into  every  work  she  touched.  Only  her 
intimate  friends  knew  the  exhausting  labour  which  she 
bestowed  on  her  books,  and  the  untiring  patience  with 
which  she  strove  to  answer  every  call  made  on  her 
attention  by  friendship,  or  her  own  household,  or  any 
incident  of  her  literary  life.  Everything  she  did  was 
carefully  planned  and  studiously  worked  out ;  and 
whether  it  was  a  letter,  the  visit  of  a  friend,  a  foreign 
tour,  or  the  plot  of  a  novel,  she  put  into  it  the  best 
she  had,  and  the  utmost  pains  to  make  it  perfect. 
Where  she  failed  at  all,  I  think,  was  in  spontaneity, 
verve,  and  abandon.  This  extreme  conscientiousness 
to  do  everything  as  well  as  she  could  do  it  gave  a  cer- 
tain air  of  stiffness  to  her  letters,  made  some  of  her 
books  overcharged  and  langweilig  (this  is  especially 
true  of  Romo/a),  and  it  certainly  ruined  her  poetry. 

One  of  my  most  interesting  reminiscences  was  a 
little  dinner  at  her  house,  when  Anthony  Trollope 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  211 


and  she  compared  notes  on  their  respective  ways  of 
working.  Trollope  said  that  he  sat  down  to  his  desk 
every  morning  early  and  wrote  the  given  number  of 
words  every  quarter  of  an  hour  by  the  clock.  George 
Eliot  groaned  out  that  she  sometimes  spent  days  in 
poor  health  and  low  spirits  without  producing  a  line, 
and  often  tore  up  and  rewrote  a  chapter  over  and 
over  again.  "  Ah  !  "  said  Anthony,  "  for  imaginative 
work  like  yours  that  is  right  and  inevitable ;  but  my 
stuff  has  to  be  made  at  a  more  business-like  rate." 

George  Eliot's  name  reminds  me  of  another  great 
novelist,  a  friend  of  hers,  the  Russian  Tourgenieff, 
to  whom  I  was  introduced  by  Professor  Kovalevski. 
Tourgenieff's  person  was  the  grandest  I  ever  remem- 
ber to  have  seen  in  the  flesh.  With  a  head  that  re- 
called the  Olympian  Zeus,  on  an  almost  gigantic  and 
stately  frame,  he  looked  more  like  an  ancient  hero  than 
a  mortal  of  our  modern  age.  His  simplicity,  his  courtly 
manners,  his  singular  union  of  dignity  and  naivete, 
charmed  every  one  he  addressed.  I  can  recall  with 
sad  interest  his  pathetic  picture  of  modern  Russia, 
that  ambiguous  land,  he  said,  halfway  between  Europe 
and  Asia,  yet  belonging  quite  to  neither,  his  blushing 
over  the  transports  of  the  student  girls  who  fell  upon 
his  neck,  whilst  the  youths  dragged  his  carriage 
through  the  streets  after  his  lecture  at  the  University, 
—  "a  lecture,"  he  said  humbly,  "that  was  strictly  con- 
fined to  Russian  literature  without  one  word  of  poli- 
tics." His  conversation  was  of  a  piece  with  his  fine 
manners  and  noble  bearing,  —  simple,  serious,  instruc- 


212  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

tive,  and  poetic.  I  visited  him  in  his  quiet  apartment 
in  the  Rue  de  Madrid  looking  out  over  a  pleasant  gar- 
den ;  and  he  talked  sadly  for  an  hour  of  Russia,  from 
which  he  had  been  so  long  an  exile.  And  I  cannot 
forget  how  he  came  in  from  Versailles  once  with  a 
large  brown-paper  parcel,  which  he  seemed  to  cherish 
with  great  care.  I  asked  if  we  could  relieve  him  of 
his  burden.  "  Ahnon!"  said  he,  "ce  sont  les  souliers 
de  ces  Demoiselles"  This  poet  of  European  fame  was 
pleased  to  be  the  errand  boy  and  light  porter  for  the 
shoes  of  his  friends'  girls  ! 

Another  hero  of  European  name  I  have  seen  under 
many  aspects,  —  General  Garibaldi.  I  met  him  in 
1859  in  the  Romagna,  when  he  was  at  the  head  of  his 
volunteer  army,  going  from  town  to  town  and  from 
village  to  village  to  rouse  the  people  to  withstand  the 
return  of  Pope  and  Austrians  after  the  Treaty  of  Villa- 
franca.  As  one  passed  through  the  Duchies  and  the 
Bolognese,  one  could  tell  at  a  glance  if  Garibaldi  had 
been  there  or  not.  If  not,  in  that  September,  all  was 
stagnation.  If  he  had  been  there,  it  was  a  people 
rising  to  arm  itself.  I  saw  him  again  in  1864  in  his 
triumphal  visit  to  London,  when  enormous  crowds 
filled  the  streets  to  see  him,  and  the  excitement  became 
so  alarming  to  the  government  of  Lord  Palmerston, 
that  they  induced  the  general,  by  the  agency  of  Lord 
Shaftesbury  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  to  cut  short  his  visit, 
and  abruptly  to  withdraw  to  Caprera.  Garibaldi  and 
his  friends  were  quite  aware  of  the  intrigues  that  led 
to  his  dismissal,  —  the  true  inner  history  of  which  was 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  213 

told  in  a  pamphlet  that  was  suppressed  at  the  time, 
but  which  may  one  day  be  known.  Some  years  later, 
I  heard  Garibaldi  at  a  so-called  Peace  Congress  at 
Geneva,  and  was  personally  presented  to  him  at  his 
hotel.  To  see  him  approach,  to  hear  his  voice,  and 
take  his  hand  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  were  brought  face 
to  face  with  an  apparition  or  a  wraith.  How  could 
one  forget  the  strange  historic  costume  and  red  shirt, 
the  sweetness  of  his  expression  and  voice,  the  saint- 
like gentleness  of  his  bearing,  with  its  ineffable  air  of 
benevolence,  as  a  widow  woman  in  mourning  fell  on 
her  knees  and  begged  him  to  lay  hands  on  her  son 
and  dedicate  the  boy  to  the  country  ?  And  this  the 
hero  did  quite  simply  and  seriously,  looking  for  all 
the  world  like  a  picture  by  Luini  of  "  Suffer  little 
children  to  come  unto  me  !  " 

Mazzini  lives  in  my  memory  as  the  most  impressive 
personality  with  whom  I  have  ever  conversed.  He 
was  always  the  apostle,  the  fervid  preacher  of  a  cause 
that  had  become  his  religion  and  his  creed.  The  unity 
of  Italy  was  to  him  a  new  revelation,  of  which  he  was 
inspired  to  tell  the  glad  tidings  of  great  joy.  And 
what  eloquence,  what  a  torrent  of  thought  and  feeling, 
what  a  sublime  faith  in  his  country  and  its  future ! 
Mazzini  made  one  understand  the  influence  of  Savo- 
narola,—  or  one  ought  rather  to  say  of  Giordano 
Bruno,  "  the  awakener  of  the  souls  that  are  asleep." 
It  was  a  great  time  in  those  sixties  for  the  "  Giovane 
Italia"  Would  that  the  manhood  of  Italy  were  des- 
tined to  show  forth  in  accomplishment  the  dreams,  the 


214  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

aspirations,  and  the  sacrifices  of  the  noble  enthusiasts 
of  the  Risorgimento.  Nel  tempo  passato,  era  anche  to 
Italianissimo  :  —  ma  adesso  ! 

I  was  taken  one  night  by  my  dear  old  friend  Louis 
Blanc  —  himself  one  of  the  kindest,  most  honest,  most 
devoted  of  doctrinaire  democrats  —  to  sup  at  the  house 
of  Victor  Hugo.  Victor  had  little  of  the  poet  or  the 
orator  about  him.  You  might  have  taken  him  for  a 
stout  weather-beaten  sea  captain,  bluff  in  manner, 
imperative  in  tone  and  gesture,  hearty  with  his  own 
family,  and  somewhat  impatient  with  outside  people. 
He  was  treated  with  a  deference  that  is  hardly  shown 
in  private  to  princes  of  the  blood ;  when  he  spoke, 
even  in  whispers  to  a  political  friend,  the  whole  room 
was  expected  to  maintain  strict  silence.  "  II  parle," 
—  said  Louis  Blanc,  though  none  of  us,  except 
Naquet,  the  Senator,  were  permitted  to  hear  the 
words.  A  fervent  admirer  would  come  up,  present, 
almost  on  his  knees,  a  copy  of  the  poet's  Ann'ee  Ter- 
rible, and  beg  the  favour  of  the  author's  autograph. 
I  cannot  honestly  say  that,  in  the  course  of  the  eve- 
ning, I  heard  one  word  that  was  interesting  or  char- 
acteristic drop  from  the  lips  on  which  France  and 
Europe  would  hang  in  expectation.  But  such  is  the 
way  sometimes  with  your  great  poet  in  the  flesh.  To 
me  it  was  enough  to  have  seen  this  rare  genius  of 
modern  France.  He  might  have  been  a  great  soldier 
or  sailor,  —  might  have  won  historic  victories  or  com- 
manded an  expedition  to  the  Pole. 

One  other  famous  Frenchman,  who  also  now  lies  in 


PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES  215 

the  Pantheon,  I  was  privileged  to  know — Leon  Gam- 
betta  —  in  my  opinion  far  the  greatest  orator  of  the 
century,  and  one  of  her  sons  to  whom  France  has 
been  least  grateful.  For  I  count  it  amongst  the 
calamities  of  French  history  that  Hoche  in  the  Revo- 
lution and  Gambetta  in  our  time  were  cut  off  in  their 
prime.  I  can  never  forget  the  roar  of  indignation  as 
he  bounded  from  his  seat,  when  I  ventured  to  ask 
him  if  France  could  have  prolonged  the  struggle  with 
Germany  after  the  surrender  of  Paris.  I  was  in 
France  during  the  obstinate  battle  against  Mac- 
mahon  and  de  Broglie  that  is  known  as  the  "  Seize 
Mai,"  and  I  had  abundant  opportunity  to  learn  the 
extraordinary  energy,  sagacity,  and  courage  with 
which  Gambetta  commanded  the  campaign  which 
saved  the  Republic  and  eventually  forced  the  Mar- 
shal to  accept  the  second  alternative  of  the  famous 
dilemma  —  se  soumettre  ou  se  demettre. 

Nor  can  I  ever  forget  that  it  was  Gambetta  who 
publicly  proclaimed  Auguste  Comte  as  "  the  greatest 
thinker  of  the  Nineteenth  Century."  I  am  now,  I 
think,  the  only  English  Positivist  who  had  personal 
knowledge  of  Comte.  I  hope  one  day  to  give  some 
account  of  what  I  saw  and  heard.  I  was  at  once 
admitted,  without  introduction  or  appointment,  to  a 
long  interview  in  the  quiet  apartments  in  Rue  Mon- 
sieur-le-Prince  which  have  been  kept  as  a  relic  for 
forty-four  years  since  the  death  of  the  philosopher. 
Of  the  build  and  energy  of  Thiers,  Comte  had  the 
small  stature  and  wonderful  nerve-force  that  is  pecu- 


2l6  PERSONAL    REMINISCENCES 

liar  to  the  men  of  the  south.  He  received  me  a 
young  Oxford  student,  as  a  pupil  of  Richard  Con- 
greve,  with  singular  courtesy  and  frankness.  He 
asked  me  what  had  been  my  studies,  what  was  my 
mental  attitude,  what  I  knew  of  his  system,  and 
about  what  I  wished  him  to  speak.  It  was  the  period 
whilst  he  was  still  engaged  on  his  second  great  work, 
the  Polity ,  with  his  sketch  of  a  Religion  of  Human- 
ity, of  which  I  knew  nothing,  for  I  had  read  little 
but  Miss  Martineau's  condensed  translation  of  the 
Philosophy.  I  told  Comte  that  I  adhered  generally  to 
the  Christian  faith  in  which  I  had  been  brought  up ; 
nor  did  he  seek  to  disturb  my  beliefs.  I  stated  in 
turn  a  variety  of  subjects  on  which  1  desired  to  hear 
his  views.  On  each  he  spoke  with  entire  freedom, 
clearness,  and  force.  His  oral  exposition  was  far  more 
easy  to  follow,  and  hence  more  fascinating,  than  his 
published  books.  As  a  lecturer  his  manner  and 
resources  were  perfect.  I  left  the  philosopher  pro- 
foundly impressed  and  greatly  enlightened.  From 
that  day,  I  continued  to  study  and  meditate  on  doc- 
trines which  for  forty  years  have  guided  my  mind  and 
my  life,  —  in  humble  devotion  to  which  I  trust  in 
Humanity  to  live  and  to  die. 


MUNICIPAL   GOVERNMENT 


Municipal  Government 

AN  ADDRESS  TO  THE  MUNICIPAL  REFORM  LEAGUE  OF  BOSTON 

THERE  has  long  been  a  tendency  in  Europe  to  regard 
Massachusetts  and  its  capital  city  of  Boston  as  the  true 
intellectual,  artistic,  and  religious  centre  of  the  United 
States.  It  is  not  for  me  to  express  any  confident  opin- 
ion on  this  delicate  point;  but  as  I  am  pretty  sure  that 
such  is  the  rooted  belief  of  all  patriotic  citizens  of  this 
ancient  cradle  of  New  England,  I  gladly  accept  the 
invitation  of  the  Municipal  Reform  Union ;  and  will 
say  a  few  words  on  the  subject  of  Municipal  Organisa- 
tion in  general.  It  is  a  topic  whereon  I  have  long  felt 
deep  interest,  which  was  much  stimulated  when  I  found 
myself  unexpectedly  coopted  as  an  Alderman  of  the 
London  County  Council  in  1889.  And  I  suppose 
that  the  problems  of  Municipal  Organisation  are  pre- 
cisely those  whereon  the  citizens  of  the  Republic  have 
to  meet  the  severest  strictures,  and  whereon  they  may 
feel  the  most  frequent  misgivings. 

I  am  certainly  not  about  to  repeat  or  expand  any 
criticisms  such  as  reach  us  in  Europe  of  the  weak  side 
of  American  municipal  institutions,  least  of  all  could  I 
do  so  in  Boston,  where  in  things  municipal,  as  in  things 

219 


220  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

educational  and  intellectual,  so  bright  an  example  of 
progress  and  efficiency  is  presented  to  the  whole  Union. 
But  as  Mr.  Bryce  has  told  us,  "the  government  of  cities 
is  the  one  conspicuous  failure  of  the  United  States  "  ; 
and  the  body  of  criticisms  thereon  which  he  has  collected 
come  from  American  and  not  from  British  sources.  I 
am  not  about  to  repeat  any  of  these  criticisms,  whether 
British  or  American ;  and  I  think  it  may  be  more  use- 
ful if  I  tell  you  something  of  our  own  difficulties  and 
failures,  and  the  methods  by  which  we  have  endeavoured 
to  meet  them. 

I  suppose  there  is  not  a  single  form  of  maladminis- 
tration, bungling,  jobbery,  and  corruption  against  which 
municipal  reformers  in  the  States  have  ever  struggled, 
but  what  striking  examples  of  the  same  evils  have  been 
rife  in  Great  Britain  at  one  time  or  other.  The  munici- 
pal government  of  London,  Edinburgh,  and  Dublin 
a  hundred  years  ago  was  choked  with  antiquated  abuses. 
And  it  has  been  after  a  struggle,  fought  inch  by  inch 
all  through  the  last  century,  that  most  of  these  abuses 
have  been  gradually  reduced.  Close  corporations, 
hereditary  franchises,  bribery,  sale  of  privileges,  party 
nominations,  have  inflicted  on  our  citizens  ill-paved 
streets,  public  nuisances,  incapable  officials,  secret 
favours,  impure  water,  feeble  lighting,  and  a  burlesque 
police.  All  these  abuses  existed  unchecked  in  Great 
Britain  down  to  about  seventy  years  ago,  when  the 
Reform  movement  began  in  earnest.  British  difficul- 
ties are  mainly  due  to  antiquity  and  conservatism  — 
the  ruinous  legacy  of  old  times  and  of  class  govern- 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  221 

merit.  American  abuses,  I  suppose,  are  largely  due 
to  youth,  ignorance,  inexperience,  and  the  opportuni- 
ties which  unlimited  democracy  offers  to  an  incessant 
immigration  of  refugees  from  Europe,  unsettled,  igno- 
rant, heterogeneous,  and  necessitous. 

In  our  country  the  conditions  are  reversed.  Our 
emigrants  largely  exceed  our  immigrants.  Our  popu- 
lation is  much  more  settled,  and  is  organised  in  regu- 
larly defined  classes  and  functions.  The  small  area  and 
dense  population  of  our  land  affords  a  closer  inspection 
and  watchfulness  of  citizens  over  those  institutions  and 
arrangements  which  affect  them.  But  the  principal 
difference  is  this  —  that  we  have  a  considerable  class 
of  men,  having  wealth,  experience,  energy,  and  the 
habits  of  command,  who  are  always  ready  to  devote 
their  time  to  the  public  service  without  reward  or  offi- 
cial rank.  On  the  other  hand  in  the  Republic,  the 
imperative  sense  of  abstract  equality,  and  unbounded 
faith  in  the  electoral  machine  as  the  panacea  and  palla- 
dium of  democracy,  force  men  of  wealth  either  to  be 
idle  or  to  stick  to  their  counting-house,  and  force  men 
of  ability  to  disclaim  any  pretension  to  lead  or  direct 
their  fellow-citizens  except  as  their  nominees  and 
agents. 

Take  the  case  of  London  and  mark  the  accumu- 
lation of  difficulties,  —  physical,  legal,  historical,  and 
social, — material  and  traditional  obstacles  to  Municipal 
Organisation  of  a  high  type.  The  city  itself  is  nearly  two 
thousand  years  old,  and  still  retains  some  of  the  geo- 
graphical and  geologic  conditions  that  come  down  from 


222  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

the  original  Llyndyn,  or  the  Hill  in  the  Mud  Swamp. 
Some  of  its  streets  are  one  or  two  thousand  years  old, 
dating  from  the  Romans  or  the  time  when  the  city  was 
restored  by  Alfred  after  the  Danish  destruction.  Its 
Charter  dates  from  the  Conqueror  in  the  eleventh 
century.  Its  corporation  and  officers  date  from  the 
thirteenth  century  ;  and  most  of  its  institutions  have 
several  centuries  of  antiquity.  The  corporation  has 
long  historic  and  even  constitutional  relations  with  the 
Imperial  Government  and  Crown.  Its  privileges  and 
sanctities  resemble  those  of  the  palace  of  Westminster 
or  the  Mace  of  the  House  of  Commons.  "  Baubles  " 
they  may  be,  but  to  touch  them  sends  a  shudder 
through  British  respectable  society.  What  with  the 
complications  of  these  venerable  societies,  to  touch  the 
status  quo  of  London  institutions  is  to  assail  the  Ark 
of  the  Covenant.  And  then  —  what  with  coal  smoke, 
foggy  atmosphere,  a  muddy  river,  and  a  huge  city  with 
an  area  of  thirty  or  forty  miles  in  circumference  —  the 
obstacles  to  municipal  reorganisation  in  London  are 
somewhat  formidable. 

Prolonged  and  untiring  efforts  have  at  last  done 
much  to  overcome  these  obstacles.  The  Municipal 
Corporations  Act  of  1835  made  a  clean  sweep  of  the 
old  obsolete  monopolies,  though  it  did  not  venture  to 
touch  the  city  of  London  which  still  remains  a  sort 
of  Alsatia  —  or  city  of  refuge  for  incorrigible  survivals. 
The  Metropolitan  Board  of  Works  was  an  attempt  to 
unite  the  authorities  of  the  Metropolis  in  one  body ; 
but  its  incompetence  and  jobbery  led  to  its  end  in 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  223 

1888.  In  1889  the  London  County  Council  was 
established  ;  and  by  common  consent  it  has  proved 
itself  an  immense  improvement  on  the  old  Board  of 
Works.  It  is  truly  representative  of  all  classes  of  the 
kingdom,  and  at  different  times  it  has  had  as  its  elected 
members  peers,  statesmen,  Cabinet  Councillors,  Mem- 
bers of  Parliament,  eminent  servants  of  the  Crown, 
lawyers,  bankers,  merchants,  manufacturers,  soldiers, 
artists,  tradesmen,  engineers,  trades  union  officials,  and 
working-men  ;  and  these  classes  have  been  represented 
by  a  wide  and  honest  suffrage.  The  body  is  therefore 
peculiarly  democratic  in  constitution,  whilst  long  pub- 
lic service  and  youth,  wealth,  rank,  and  labour  are 
mixed  together  in  a  degree  hardly  to  be  found  in  any 
other  governing  body  in  England,  or  perhaps  one  may 
add,  in  Europe. 

This  body,  on  which  I  had  the  honour  of  serving 
for  some  years,  has  certainly  solved  the  problem  of  an 
elective  municipal  council  being  able  to  maintain  a 
reputation  for  the  strictest  purity  and  the  most  rigid 
economy.  Its  offices  have  been  filled  by  some  of  the 
most  eminent  statesmen,  the  most  experienced  public 
officials,  and  some  of  the  most  trusted  financiers  in  the 
kingdom.  Its  first  Chairman,  Lord  Rosebery,  became 
the  successor  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  Prime  Minister  ; 
its  budget  has  been  framed  by  men  who  have  spent 
their  lives  in  guiding  the  financial  and  commercial 
interests  of  the  Empire :  and  most  of  its  departments 
have  been  served  with  an  efficiency  and  economy  which 
might  do  honour  to  any  government.  In  the  twelve 


224  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

years  of  its  active  career  the  County  Council  has  not 
been  accused  by  its  bitterest  critics  —  for,  as  an  emi- 
nently democratic  and  reforming  body,  of  course  it 
has  these  —  with  the  suspicion  of  jobbery,  waste,  or 
corruption  in  any  of  its  members. 

The  whole  of  the  services  given  by  the  members  — 
even  where  they  amount  to  very  close  application  to 
administrative  routine  —  are  entirely  voluntary.  No 
member  of  the  Council  receives  any  salary  or  perqui- 
site whatever,  except  the  Deputy  Chairman,  who  is  in 
the  position  of  General  Manager.  There  are  no  allow- 
ances of  any  kind  for  any  purpose.  If  the  councillor 
at  the  end  of  a  long  day's  work  needs  refreshment,  he 
has  to  pay  for  it ;  and  if  the  Chairman  invites  his  col- 
leagues to  an  entertainment,  he  has  to  bear  the  entire 
cost.  I  do  not  know  of  any  institution  at  home  or 
abroad,  public  or  private,  which  is  served  on  a  volun- 
teer system  quite  so  rigid.  I  could  tell  you  of  hard- 
worked  business  men  and  professional  men,  some 
having  great  affairs  of  their  own,  and  some  with  small 
affairs,  who  devote,  not  their  leisure  hours,  but  a  large 
part  of  their  busy  day  to  the  service  of  their  fellow- 
citizens.  And  I  might  instance  a  philanthropic  manu- 
facturer who,  in  middle  life,  closed  his  own  works,  and 
for  twelve  years  has  given  every  hour  of  his  time, 
without  fee  or  honour,  to  the  incessant  drudgery  of 
departmental  management, — labour  which  a  bank  clerk 
would  think  ill-paid  by  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year. 

There  have  been  immediate  effects  from  this  creation 
of  a  body  of  men  representing  all  sides  of  English 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  225 

society,  and  bent  on  carrying  on  the  work  of  the 
public  with  strict  honesty  and  thorough  efficiency.  It 
is  no  doubt  one  of  the  results  of  our  having  a  settled 
and  organised  society  in  England,  where  men  of  wealth 
and  power  are  brought  up  in  a  certain  tradition  of  be- 
ing a  governing  class,  that  a  democratic  election  sends 
to  work  side  by  side  on  the  same  benches,  magnates, 
millionnaires,  old  officials  and  statesmen,  men  of  culture, 
traders,  and  wage-earners  alike.  They  have  plunged 
into  all  the  knotty  problems  of  municipal  organisation, 
—  rehousing  the  poor,  improvement  of  streets,  sanitary 
inspection  and  legislation,  the  war  against  unjust 
weights  and  measures,  against  adulteration  of  food,  the 
general  regulations  for  city  building,  prohibition  of 
excessive  height  of  buildings  and  unsafe  erections,  the 
purifications  of  the  sewers,  the  supply  of  water,  gas, 
electricity,  the  control  of  tramcars,  the  management 
and  extension  of  public  parks,  the  care  of  a  vast  body 
of  indigent  lunatics,  and  the  foundation  of  a  system  of 
technical  education.  It  would  be  too  much  to  pre- 
tend that  all  of  these  duties  have  been  performed  with 
equal  success.  But  there  has  been  no  real  breakdown, 
and  not  a  breath  of  corrupt  influence  in  any  one  of 
these  departments ;  and  in  many  of  them  the  most 
conspicuous  progress  has  been  achieved. 

One  of  the  salient  features  of  the  London  County 
Council  is  the  close  connection  it  has  with  the  Imperial 
Legislature  and  Government.  About  one-fifth  or  one- 
sixth  of  the  Council  are  usually  members  of  the  Legis- 
lature or  retired  Government  officials  of  the  higher 


226  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

rank.  Every  important  act  of  the  Council,  be  it  a 
new  street  improvement,  a  scheme  of  water  supply,  or 
fresh  powers  for  sanitary  inspection,  involves  an  appeal 
to  the  Legislature,  and  full  consideration  in  legal  form 
by  committees  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  As 
these  Acts  of  Parliament  are  passed  only  after  strict 
criticism  and  inquiry,  and  as  both  Houses  are  in  so 
close  touch  with  the  Council,  ample  publicity  and 
judicial  impartiality  has  to  be  given  to  every  applica- 
tion made  by  the  Council  for  fresh  powers.  There  is 
no  room  in  such  a  system  for  hole-and-corner  Bills, 
"  lobbying,"  or  personal  interests.  Committees  of  the 
Imperial  Parliament  may  be  slow,  stupid,  obstructive, 
and  narrow , —  but  they  are  not  known  to  be  venal, 
timid,  or  servile.  And  the  Imperial  Government 
rejoices  in  its  powers  of  clipping  the  wings  and  prob- 
ing the  schemes  of  the  Council,  which  is  far  too 
democratic  and  far  too  favourable  to  Labour  to  find 
much  encouragement  in  a  conservative  government 
of  the  old  school, 

Not  only  is  the  London  County  Council  severely 
scrutinised  by  the  Imperial  Government  of  administra- 
tion,—  never  very  willing  to  show  it  any  favour, — 
not  only  is  it  bound  hand  and  foot  by  legislative 
bonds,  but  it  is  at  every  point  open  to  the  appeal  to 
judicial  decision  in  respect  of  the  least  infringement 
of  its  legal  powers.  The  poet  asked  that  terrible  home 
question  —  Quid  leges  sine  moribus?  What,  indeed, 
is  the  good  of  passing  laws  if  public  opinion  itself  is 
corrupt  ?  And  we  may  say  —  Quid  leges  sine  tribunals- 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  227 

bus?  What  is  the  good  of  laws  if  courts  of  justice  do 
not  honestly  carry  them  into  execution  ?  Now  here 
is  the  strong  point,  the  true  pride  of  our  British  insti- 
tutions. From  that  of  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  to  that 
of  a  stipendiary  magistrate,  every  English  court  is 
bound  to  administer  the  law,  swiftly,  impartially,  in- 
exorably, without  the  smallest  concern  of  wealth,  rank, 
office,  reputation,  or  influence.  No  judge  of  any  kind 
is  elected  by  anyone,  nor  has  he  anyone  above  him  to 
give  him  orders,  nor  has  he  any  term  to  his  office,  nor 
can  he  be  removed,  even  by  the.  Crown.  An  English 
judge  is  a  Rhadamanthine  being  who  is  no  respecter 
of  persons,  who  deals  out  equal  decisions,  alike  to  all, 
—  one  to  whom  magnate,  millionnaire,  or  "  boss,"  are 
simply  "  the  defendant,"  or  the  "  prisoner  at  the  bar." 
The  effect  of  this  is  that  any  person,  however  poor 
or  humble,  who  fancies  himself  to  be  aggrieved  by 
any  act  of  the  Council  in  excess  of  its  legal  powers, 
can  immediately  bring  the  issue  to  trial,  and  he  knows 
very  well  that  he  will  get  ample  redress  if  the  law  is 
on  his  side.  The  judge,  whether  he  sit  in  a  police 
court  or  in  the  Royal  Courts  of  Justice,  will  not  care 
a  straw  whether  the  Defendant  before  him  can  control 
fifty  thousand  electors  or  fifty  million  sterling.  Any 
unconscious  bias  he  may  have  will  usually  lead  him  to 
suspect  the  doings  of  democratic  bodies  and  leaders. 
And  thus,  the  smallest  attempt  at  jobbery,  oppression, 
or  corruption,  whether  in  the  Council,  or  any  of  its 
members  or  servants,  is  liable  to  be  summarily  dealt 
with  by  tribunals  which  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to 


228  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

influence,  to  mislead,  to  terrify,  or  to  buy.  The  Lon- 
don County  Council  I  take  to  be  more  free  from  any- 
thing of  the  kind  than  perhaps  any  other  institution 
in  our  country,  and  the  key  of  the  system  is  the  in- 
violable independence  of  the  judicial  body. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  London  Council  of  which  I 
have  knowledge  from  experience,  but  I  have  no  rea- 
son to  doubt  that  much  the  same  tale  could  be  told 
by  members  of  the  Councils  in  the  cities  of  Manches- 
ter, Birmingham,  Edinburgh,  and  Glasgow.  In 
several  points  I  believe  they  could  point  to  success 
even  greater  than  in  London,  partly  because  they  are 
less  involved  in  the  maelstrom  of  Imperial  Politics, 
and  have  not  to  contend  against  obsolete  institutions, 
historic  rivals,  and  a  hostile  government.  The  pro- 
vincial municipalities  of  our  country  are  for  the  most 
part  efficient,  popular,  and  entirely  honest  corpora- 
tions, working  under  the  three  great  conditions  of 
good  order  that  I  have  noted,  —  strong  popular  inter- 
est, trustworthy  representatives,  and  an  incorruptible 
and  independent  judiciary. 

You  may  ask  me  if  I  have  no  reverse  of  the  medal 
to  show  you,  and  if  I  mean  to  say  that  in  London 
everything  is  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible 
cities.  Far  from  it  alas !  Our  great  bane,  as  I  am 
told  it  is  yours  in  all  municipal  reform,  is  the  curse  of 
Party  Politics.  London  is  the  seat  of  the  Imperial 
Legislature  and  Government,  and  it  is  also  the  seat  of 
our  Imperial  Finance  and  Trade.  Ever  since  the 
democratising  of  our  Parliament  in  the  last  genera- 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  22Q 

tion,  London  has  been  one  of  the  strongholds  of  the 
Conservative  Party.  Since  its  foundation  twelve  years 
ago,  the  London  County  Council,  as  an  eminently 
progressive  body,  has  been  an  object  of  jealousy  and 
opposition  to  the  conservative  majority  and  govern- 
ment. And  its  efforts  have  been  constantly  thwarted 
by  the  Legislature  and  by  the  Ministry,  when  it  has 
sought  to  free  its  citizens  from  monopolists  of  water, 
gas,  and  street  traffic,  when  it  has  striven  to  tax  the 
ground  landlord,  or  to  shake  off  the  incubus  of  the 
antique  privileges  of  the  mediaeval  city. 

We  hear  a  good  deal  over  our  side  of  the  water 
about  your  Tammanys  and  local  rings,  and  as  to  the 
"  Boss  "  system  in  American  cities.  Something  of 
the  kind  is  not  unknown  with  us,  under  grander 
names  and  more  sonorous  forms.  What  is  "  Tam- 
many," what  is  a  "  Boss "  ?  You  will  correct  me, 
but  I  am  told  the  first  is  a  close  political  caucus,  a 
more  or  less  secret  society,  pledged  to  vote  in  a  body 
to  keep  up  the  material  interests  of  its  members  and 
that  of  the  classes  and  groups  which  it  patronises 
and  nurses.  As  a  former  mayor  of  a  city,  a  very  long 
way  from  Boston,  told  me,  "  the  police  of  this  town 
exist  for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  vice  and  of  pro- 
tecting crime."  They  say  there  are  certain  cities 
which  are  run  by  a  sort  of  mafia,  the  business  of  which 
is  to  promote  jobbery  and  to  enable  monopolists  to 
thrive.  Well !  such  things  have  been  heard  of  in 
Europe,  and  one  of  the  functions  of  our  venerable 
House  of  Lords  is  to  protect  obsolete  privileges  to 


230  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

secure  the  material  interests  of  its  order  and  the 
classes  it  represents,  and  to  prevent  any  interference 
with  monopolies,  exemptions,  and  antique  claims  that 
may  conflict  with  the  interest  of  the  general  public. 
And  the  business  of  the  "  boss,"  who  in  our  country 
has  a  very  grand  name  indeed,  is  by  magniloquent 
speeches  and  lofty  pretensions  to  see  that  the  "ring" 
keeps  its  own  counsel  and  votes  the  straight  ticket  in 
silence. 

London,  I  believe,  would  have  a  model  municipal 
government  of  its  own  were  it  not  for  three  obsta- 
cles :  first  its  physical  difficulties,  population,  area, 
climate,  ancient  sites  and  encumbrances ;  secondly, 
the  antique  privileges  and  accumulation  of  legalised 
corporations  within  it ;  lastly  the  systematic  opposi- 
tion of  a  legislative  House  which  is  itself  a  typical 
monopoly  and  incubus.  With  all  the  differences 
between  American  and  British  municipalities,  there 
are  certain  analogies  and  relations  which  make  com- 
parison useful  and  instructive.  Both  have  their 
special  difficulties  to  meet,  their  special  advantages  to 
use. 

The  cities  of  the  United  States  begin  with  vast  oppor- 
tunities in  that  they  are  free  from  the  three  obstacles 
that  hamper  the  complete  reform  of  London.  They 
start  for  the  most  part  with  a  clean  slate.  They  have 
not  the  physical  obstacles  to  overcome,  nor  antiquated 
abuses,  nor  any  hereditary  legislature  to  wrestle  with. 
The  original  cities  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard  —  Boston, 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  or  Baltimore  —  have  had 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  23! 

some  trouble  in  dealing  with  the  estuaries  on  which  the 
old  colonists  placed  them.  But  these  troubles  are 
nothing  to  the  narrow  streets  and  indestructible  lines  of 

o 

Old  London.  Most  American  cities  have  an  open 
area  of  boundless  extent  which,  for  such  cities  as 
Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and  San  Francisco,  attain  to  ideal 
conditions.  The  abuses  of  American  cities  are  the 
creation  of  the  last  generation  or  two,  and  have  not  a 
rag  of  law  or  of  sentiment  wherewith  to  hide  their 
deformities.  And  there  is  nothing  hereditary  in 
the  United  States,  —  not  even  misery,  or  vice,  or 
crime. 

But  these  advantages,  I  am  assured,  are  neutralised, 
nay,  more  than  neutralised,  by  other  evils.  I  am  not 
alluding  to  Boston,  which  I  have  every  reason  to  be- 
lieve is  administered  with  a  skill  and  an  honesty  that 
may  compare  with  the  most  successful  municipalities 
of  Europe.  But  in  other  states  than  Massachusetts, 
I  am  told,  the  "  ring "  and  the  "  boss  "  still  flourish 
to  the  despair  of  the  good  citizen  and  the  worrying  of 
his  life.  Certainly,  I  have  myself  observed,  in  my 
travels  through  the  States,  eccentricities  of  paving,  of 
building,  of  police  mismanagement,  public  nuisances, 
which  are  more  like  Constantinople  than  this  Republic. 
And  when  I  ask  how  these  things  come  to  be  endured 
by  a  people  who  pride  themselves  on  being  up-to-date 
in  everything,  if  not  indeed  some  way  into  futurity,  I 
am  told  with  groans  that  it  is  all  owing  to  the  "  rings  " 
and  the  "bosses,"  and  the  apathy  of  good  citizens  who 
have  not  the  courage  to  face  the  "  Camorrists,"  or  are 


232  MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT 

so  much  absorbed  in  their  own  private  affairs  that  they 
have  no  time  to  give  to  the  interests  of  the  public. 

They  would  have  the  courage  to  face  the  "  Camorra," 
if  every  Judge  in  the  United  States  were  as  free  from 
any  thought  of  fearing  or  favouring  a  "  boss "  or  a 
"  ring,"  as  he  would  be  of  fearing  or  favouring  a  com- 
mon pickpocket  or  a  betting  gang.  And  there  would 
be  plenty  of  competent  men  willing  to  give  their  time 
and  service  to  the  public,  if  the  example  of  Boston 
and  of  the  state  of  Massachusetts  were  more  generally 
followed  throughout  the  Union.  Here  we  find  a  con- 
siderable class  of  citizens,  quite  satisfied  with  the  for- 
tunes they  have  inherited  or  made,  who  are  ready  to 
devote  the  rest  of  their  lives  to  literature,  science,  and 
the  conduct  of  public  affairs.  Hence  have  sprung  all 
the  Libraries,  Athenaeums,  Colleges,  Institutions,  and 
Associations  that  delight  the  visitor  in  New  England 
with  their  splendid  endowments  and  admirable  organi- 
sation. Splendid  endowments  are  common  enough 
throughout  the  States  ;  but  what  is  needed,  especially 
in  the  newer  states  of  the  Republic,  is  a  larger  body 
of  citizens  of  high  culture  and  of  spotless  character 
who  will  show  the  way  and  direct  their  fellow-citizens 
in  the  path  of  reform. 

The  needs  of  the  municipal  reformer,  I  suppose, 
may  be  condensed  in  these  two  requirements :  in- 
corruptible judicial  and  legislative  authorities ;  and 
secondly,  the  creation  of  a  large  class  of  men  of  culture 
and  eminence,  who  will  freely  take  the  burden  of 
public  government  in  the  sole  interest  of  their  fellow- 


MUNICIPAL    GOVERNMENT  2331 

citizens.  The  complete  absence  of  all  hereditary  dis- 
tinctions, the  rule  of  abstract  equality  between  all 
citizens,  and  the  almost  superstitious  reverence  of 
democratic  doctrines  make  it  no  easy  task  for  culture 
and  superiority  to  gain  a  legitimate  influence  in  the 
absence  of  great  wealth  or  ambitious  intrigue.  But  it 
has  to  be  done  if  the  "  ring  "  and  the  "  boss  "  are  not 
to  be  perpetual  institutions  in  the  Republic ;  and 
though  it  takes  time,  it  will  be  done  in  the  end. 

If  a  Reformer  from  the  Old  Country  may  give  a 
word  of  encouragement  and  of  caution  to  the  Re- 
formers of  the  New  World,  it  is  that  they  must  make 
up  their  minds  for  a  long  pull,  a  strong  pull,  and  a 
pull  altogether.  Municipal  Reform  is  a  very  slow 
business,  even  slower  than  Parliamentary  Reform  or 
Political  Reform.  It  has  taken  us  in  England  the 
best  part  of  a  century ;  and  we  are  not  at  all  through 
our  task  even  yet.  Reformers  must  not  be  dis- 
heartened by  the  very  gradual  progress  in  their  efforts. 
Progress  often  comes  when  it  is  least  expected  ;  for  it 
depends  very  largely  on  waves  of  emotion  unforeseen, 
and  sudden  revivals  of  conscience  in  the  masses. 
Then  again,  the  obstructives  are  all  inspired  by  self- 
interest;  and  self-interests  are  continually  coming  to 
loggerheads  amongst  themselves.  I  will  never  suffer 
a  doubt  to  cross  my  mind  of  the  ultimate  triumph  of 
the  Reformers ;  for  their  permanent  failure  to  sweep 
away  the  municipal  abuses  of  to-day  would  inflict  a 
lasting  wound  on  the  welfare  and  the  honour  of  the 
Republic  itself. 


THE   NINETEENTH    CENTURY 


The   Nineteenth  Century 

AN  ADDRESS  GIVEN  TO  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  CLUB  OF 
NEW  YORK 

WHEN  I  was  honoured  by  an  invitation  to  speak  at 
a  meeting  of  this  famous  Club,  I  felt  very  great  doubt 
if  I  was  at  all  adequately  endowed  or  even  justly 
entitled  to  do  so.  For  I  am  opposed  by  conviction 
to  what  I  am  told  is  a  first  principle  of  the  club,  a 
debate  of  contrary  opinions,  and  I  am  conscious  of 
being  curiously  incapable  myself  of  carrying  on  such 
a  contest  so  as  to  afford  the  audience  either  profit  or 
amusement. 

Nothing,  I  think,  is  more  idle  and  even  mischievous 
than  apodeictic  debates  in  public,  where  no  practical 
conclusions  are  possible  or  sought  for,  which  end  in 
mere  talking  parades,  and  where  conviction  is  not 
desired  nor  sincerity  of  belief  expected.  I  well  remem- 
ber the  late  Courtlandt  Palmer  consulting  me  in  Eng- 
land when  he  contemplated  the  foundation  of  the  Club 
on  the.  basis  of  free  (i.e.  contradictory)  discussion  ;  and 
I  gave  him  the  historic  advice  given  to  those  about  to 
marry  —  "  Don't !  "  The  usual  result  of  advice  given 
of  course  followed,  and  the  logomachy  was  started  and 

237 


238  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

has  flourished.  I  differed  from  several  of  the  views 
of  Mr.  Palmer,  and  in  none  more  decidedly  than  in 
this.  But  when  I  received  the  invitation  of  the  lady 
whom  many  years  ago  I  had  known  in  Europe,  and 
who  now  takes  so  active  a  part  in  the  literary  and 
social  life  of  New  York,  I  resolved  to  do  my  best 
and  trust  to  your  good  nature. 

In  all  matters  of  freedom  of  thought  I  am  heartily 
with  you,  and  only  doubt  if  freedom  of  speech  is  always 
the  same  thing.  But  as  I  am  assured  that  this  is  a  real 
Temple  of  Truth,  and  that  sincerity  of  conviction  is 
the  motto  of  the  Club,  I  will  not  venture  on  any  of 
the  current  platitudes  about  the  glories  and  progress 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  but  I  will  frankly  speak  my 
whole  mind,  and  come  at  once  to  the  moral,  religious, 
and  social  questions  which  underlie  and  are  as  impor- 
tant as  railroads,  telephones,  and  mammoth  trusts. 
The  new  century  on  which  we  have  just  entered  is  a 
time  for  retrospection ;  and  the  least  thoughtful  of 
us  can  hardly  help  turning  backward  some  passing 
thought  about  the  Nineteenth  Century  which  we  have 
just  laid  to  rest.  I  look  back  on  it  myself  with  a  cer- 
tain pathos  as  becomes  my  own  time  of  life,  as  is 
natural  to  a  veteran  who  remembers  exactly  two-thirds 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  himself,  and  who  doubts  if 
its  close  fulfilled  all  the  promise  of  its  middle  life. 
Not  that  I  am  a  pessimist;  but  then  I  am  no  optimist. 
I  am,  as  George  Eliot  said,  a  me!ioristy  who  may  believe 
that  things  are  bad  and  may  be  even  worse  —  but  still 
are  certain  to  be  better  one  day. 


THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  239 

I  shall  of  course  confine  what  I  have  to  say  to  my 
own  country  and  to  Europe,  and  shall  trust  that  the 
people  of  the  United  States  have  an  easier  record  to 
look  back  on.  In  our  own  country  I  can  remember 
the  whole  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  from  1837  to  1901, 
and  can  recall  the  coronation,  the  public  festivals,  the 
two  Jubilee  ceremonies,  and  the  funeral  in  February 
last.  My  boyhood  was  passed  in  the  stormy  times 
of  the  Irish  Famine,  Chartist  agitations,  Free  Trade 
struggles,  Railroad  manias,  Bank  panics,  and  the  Euro- 
pean revolutions  of  1848-1849,  1850-1851.  These 
were  the  days  of  Wellington,  Peel,  Russell,  O'Connell 
Palmerston,  Disraeli,  and  Derby,  all  of  whom  I  often 
saw  and  heard,  and  followed  with  intense  interest  their 
political  action.  Wordsworth  was  the  Poet  Laureate, 
and  Tennyson  gave  the  promise  of  his  splendid  youth. 
Macaulay,  Hallam,  Grote,  and  Milman  were  the  his- 
torians. Dickens,  Thackeray,  Bulwer,  Kingsley,  the 
Brontes  were  the  romancists.  Stuart  Mill,  Spencer, 
Carlyle,  Ruskin  were  the  prophets.  Owen,  Lyell, 
Faraday,  Whewell  were  the  men  of  science.  New- 
man, Keble,  Maurice,  Martineau  were  the  theologians. 
I  doubt  if  we  can  show  to-day  a  roll  of  equal  power. 
I  am  certain  that  we  cannot  show  to-day  so  high  a  tone 
of  thought  and  feeling  as  that  which  inspired  these  men 
having  gifts  most  dissimilar  and  beliefs  so  various. 

But  I  pass  from  the  memories  of  my  early  school 
and  college  days  to  the  middle  of  the  century,  which 
coincided  with  my  own  entering  on  manhood.  I  cast 
my  thoughts  back  to  the  hopes  and  ideas  that  were 


24O  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

current  in  Europe  when  the  first  International  Exhibi- 
tion was  opened  in  May,  1851,  and  men  fondly  thought 
that  the  world  was  entering  on  an  era  of  peace,  industry, 
and  progress.  The  dream  was  broken  by  the  coup 
d'etat  of  Napoleon  and  the  revival  of  the  Empire;  and 
soon  followed  the  years  of  Crimean  War,  and  then  the 
Franco- Austrian  War  of  1859,  and  the  Bismarckian 
wars  of  1864-1866;  and  the  great  Civil  War  in  the 
United  States ;  and  so  on  down  to  the  great  Franco- 
German  War  of  1 870-1 871.  How  truly  melancholy  it 
is  to  find  ourselves  forced  by  the  tide  of  things  to  count 
epochs  by  wars,  as  if  bloodshed  and  waste  were  the 
true  landmarks  in  the  progress  of  mankind.  But  wars 
and  all  they  bring  with  them  and  all  they  leave  behind 
them  so  colour  the  course  of  civilisation  that  they  still 
remain  the  typical  dates. 

Now,  my  point  is,  that  the  generation  counting 
from  the  abolition  of  Protection  by  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
down  to  the  culmination  of  Bismarck  when  the  Ger- 
man Empire  was  proclaimed  in  1871,  was  an  epoch 
of  loftier  ideals,  more  generous  efforts,  more  robust 
intellects,  healthier  morality,  and  a  saner  philosophy 
than  the  generation  which  saw  the  close  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.  The  beginning  of  that  generation 
saw  such  men  as  Wellington,  Peel,  Russell,  Palmer- 
ston,  Brougham,  Cobden,  Bright.  The  close  of  that 
generation  was  the  epoch  of  Gladstone,  Disraeli,  Lord 
Derby,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  Forster,  and  Mill.  It  was 
the  era  of  the  great  movement  for  Free  Trade, — 
which  in  our  country,  at  least,  was  a  social  and  moral 


THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  24! 

reform  that  struck  at  a  selfish  and  antiquated  mo- 
nopoly. It  was  the  era  of  Parliamentary  Reform  and 
the  removal  of  the  abuses  of  a  mere  class  representa- 
tion of  the  people.  It  saw  an  immense  reform  in  our 
system  of  taxation,  which  was  made  the  most  just 
and  rational  in  the  civilised  world.  It  saw  reform  in 
the  law  :  the  emancipation  of  women  from  antique 
disabilities  ;  the  emancipation  of  workmen  from  op- 
pressive laws  and  industrial  serfdom.  Finally,  it  saw 
the  institution  of  a  generous  system  of  popular  educa- 
tion. In  Europe,  it  was  the  era  of  the  overthrow  of 
the  effete  tyrannies  of  mediaeval  and  papal  despotism, 
of  the  consolidation  of  Italy  into  a  united  nation,  of 
the  consolidation  of  Germany  as.  a  united  nation.  In 
France  it  saw  the  restoration  of  the  Republic  which  has 
now  lasted  for  more  than  thirty  years.  And  in  your 
country  it  saw  the  freedom  of  the  Republic  from  the 
curse  of  slavery,  the  consolidation  and  the  vast  expan- 
sion of  the  commonwealth  in  area,  in  wealth,  and 
in  power.  This  age,  I  say,  lived  in  a  higher  moral 
plane  than  does  our  age  to-day.  It  was  an  epoch  of 
humanitarian  aspiration,  not  always  wise,  but  with  gen- 
erous, moral,  and  social  ideals  before  its  eyes. 

It  has  been  my  happiness  to  have  listened  to  some 
of  these  moral  and  social  ideals  as  they  fell  from  the 
lips  of  those  who  led  the  thought  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  I  had  oral  exposition  of  his  system  from 
Auguste  Comte,  whom  Gambetta  named  as  "the 
greatest  thinker  of  the  century."  And  for  fifty  years 
now  I  have  diligently  searched  and  reflected  on  his 


242  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

writings.  The  English  philosopher,  who  in  so  many 
ways  may  be  compared  with  Comte,  and  in  so  many 
ways  must  be  contrasted  with  him, —  Herbert  Spen- 
cer,—  I  have  known  for  forty  years.  In  spite  of 
some  serious  differences  of  opinion,  I  have  never 
ceased  profoundly  to  respect  him,  above  alt  at  this 
season,  as  the  Englishman  who  has  most  emphatically 
condemned  the  recrudescence  of  the  evil  genius  of 
war,  conquest,  and  oppression  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong.  Nor  can  I  ever  forget  the  social  inspiration 
that  John  Stuart  Mill  gave  to  his  contemporaries,  to 
such  men  as  John  Morley,  and  Leonard  Courtney, 
Henry  Fawcett,  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  and  Auberon  Her- 
bert. To  have  listened  to  Carlyle,  or  Ruskin,  or 
Mazzini,  or  George  Eliot,  as  they  descanted  on  their 
hopes  of  the  future  and  their  forebodings  over  the 
present,  was  to  hear  that  which  was  at  once  a  sermon 
and  a  poem.  Tennyson,  Browning,  Hugo,  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold  were  our  poets  in  those  days,  —  men 
who  at  least  "uttered  nothing  base,"  if  some  found 
them  at  times  obscure  or  incoherent.  To  listen  to 
John  Bright  on  some  great  cause  which  touched  his 
soul  was  to  have  a  revelation  of  the  just,  stalwart, 
religious  spirit  of  a  Puritan  of  old.  Will  the  Twen- 
tieth Century  give  us  another  Charles  Darwin,  —  that 
immortal  type  of  the  man  of  science,  inexhaustibly 
patient,  preposterously  modest,  humble,  retiring,  and 
constitutionally  careful  never  to  go  one  step  beyond 
his  evidence  ?  Will  it  give  us  another  gentle,  unas- 
suming idealist  like  Tourgenieff,  another  historian 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  243 

compact  of  sympathy  and  imagination  like  Jules 
Michelet,  another  master  of  language  like  Renan, 
another  orator  and  tribune  of  the  Republic  like  Leon 
Gambetta  ?  It  was  a  liberal  education  to  have  spoken 
to  these  men  face  to  face,  to  have  heard  their  voice,  to 
have  watched  the  expression  of  their  look  as  their 
thoughts  rose  to  the  lip. 

Ever  since  the  apotheosis  of  Bismarck  in  1871,  we 
have  had  in  these  latter  thirty  years  imitation  Bis- 
marcks,  wars  of  conquest  and  aggression,  the  policy 
of  Blood  and  Iron,  inflation  of  trade  and  of  territory, 
"paying"  wars,  the  enthronement  of  Imperialism. 
There  have  been  wars  in  Europe,  in  Africa,  in  Amer- 
ica, and  even  in  the  Pacific ;  wars  in  the  Balkan,  in 
Asia  Minor,  in  Crete,  in  Greece,  in  Armenia,  in 
Egypt,  in  the  Soudan,  in  Abyssinia,  in  Tunis,  in  West 
Africa,  and  in  East  Africa,  in  Central  Africa,  and  in 
South  Africa ;  in  Madagascar,  in  Tonquin,  in  Siam, 
in  Burmah,  in  Northern  India,  in  China,  in  Corea,  in 
Cuba,  in  the  Philippines.  All  of  these  have  been 
begun,  or  continued,  or  have  ended  in  domination,  in 
a  scramble  for  territory,  ascendency,  or  loot.  All  have 
been  needless,  unjust,  ultimately  ruinous  to  the  de- 
feated and  to  the  victors  alike. 

The  people  have  caught  the  infection  from  their 
rulers,  and  are  as  thoroughly  drunk  with  the  lust  of 
dominion  as  kings  and  ministers.  Democracy  has 
been  discovered  to  be  a  more  facile  instrument  of  the 
"  pirate  boss "  than  aristocracy  or  monarchy  itself. 
Imperium  et  liber t as  was  the  serio-comic  motto  of  cyni- 


244  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

cal  Jingoism.  It  has  proved  to  be  merely  one  of 
the  catchwords  of  the  fraud.  The  real  motto  of  this 
policy  of  Expansion  is  Imperium  et  servitude.  Empire 
spells  slavery :  moral,  spiritual,  economic,  political  sub- 
serviency. The  connection  of  domination  with  servi- 
tude is  as  obvious  as  it  is  inevitable.  To  extend  the 
rule  of  a  nation  over  another  race,  be  it  barbarous  or 
civilised,  necessarily  involves  war;  and  if  it  be  with  an 
uncivilised  people  or  a  loosely  organised  people,  it 
involves  war  usually  in  its  most  brutal  form. 

War,  by  its  very  nature,  involves  internal  union 
and  discipline,  and  ipso  facto  compels  the  suppression 
of  all  differences  of  view,  the  silencing  of  all  criticism, 
and  the  postponement  of  all  reforms.  "  So  much  the 
better,"  cry  all  obstructives  and  reactionaries  —  the 
bigots,  the  bullies,  the  privileged,  and  the  monopolists. 
Some  dreamy  enthusiasts,  like  the  crazy  decadent  hero 
in  Tennyson's  Maud,  or  the  militant  Boanerges  of  the 
churches  have  glorified  these  wars  as  schools  of  disci- 
pline, loyalty,  and  all  the  moral  virtues.  A  war  such 
as  that  led  by  Hoche,  or  Abraham  Lincoln,  or  by 
de  Wet  may  be  all  this.  But  a  war  of  domination  is 
a  school  of  tyranny,  injustice,  and  selfishness.  Empire 
and  war  are  such  terrible  ventures,  so  fraught  with 
ruin  and  shame  to  those  who  fail,  so  disastrous  to 
nations,  and  so  full  of  horrors  to  the  men  and  women 
of  the  defeated  race,  and  not  seldom  to  the  conquerors 
as  well,  that  when  nations  enter  on  them,  they  feel 
they  must  win  or  perish.  They  sacrifice  everything 
rather  than  fail  in  their  enterprise.  If  the  cause  is 


THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  245 

good,  they  are  heroes ;  if  the  cause  be  bad,  they  be- 
come demons.  And  so  they  lie  to  themselves,  they 
let  men  lie  to  them,  they  lie  to  one  another,  that  their 
cause  is  good,  knowing  in  their  hearts  that  it  is  evil. 

A  nation  given  over  to  a  wanton  and  unjust  war  — 
and  all  wars  that  are  not  in  self-defence  are  unjust  and 
wanton  —  is  like  a  man  given  over  to  the  madness 
of  gaming.  One  throw  more  —  be  the  issue  misery 
or  hell.  They  fling  their  very  children  to  the  wolves 
to  speed  the  car  of  victory  on  its  wild  course.  They 
mortgage  their  homes  and  their  all  to  fill  the  bottom- 
less pit  of  the  war  chest.  Poetry  dribbles  down  into 
a  bloodthirsty  doggerel  —  mere  echoes  of  the  weary 
catches  they  sound  round  the  campfires  in  the  veldt. 
Religion  dribbles  down  into  sanctimonious  sermons 
on  the  holiness  of  war  —  one  of  the  blessings,  say  the 
prelates  of  the  Church,  which  the  God  of  Mercy  and 
the  Prince  of  Peace  vouchsafed  to  his  creatures  whom 
he  made  in  his  own  image. 

The  infection  extends  to  all  forms  of  thought  as 
well  as  to  all  forms  of  social  progress.  And  as  I  con- 
trast the  last  years  of  the  century  with  its  middle 
period,  I  find  not  progress  but  decadence.  I  indulge 
in  no  morbid  Jeremiad  nor  in  senile  ill-humour  with 
inevitable  change.  But,  if  it  were  my  last  word,  I 
would  insist  that  the  close  of  the  century  has  failed  to 
fulfil  the  promise  of  its  youth  and  of  its  prime. 
Forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  the  philosophy  of  Evolution, 
of  Positive  Science,  of  the  new  conception  of  Sociology, 
the  vast  world  open  to  thought  and  to  human  life  by 


246  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

the  Reign  of  Law  in  the  moral  and  social  realm  as  in 
Nature  and  Physics  —  these  conceptions  filled  the  air 
as  breathed  by  all  solid  and  serious  minds.  To-day 
philosophy  is  stagnating  in  metaphysical  maundering 
over  "  philosophic  doubts,"  things  which  are  verbal 
conundrums  rather  than  thinkable  realities.  And 
Theology  is  evaporating  in  Christian  Science,  The- 
osophy,  and  the  Mahatmas  of  some  esoteric  jargon. 

I  am  not  concerned  to  repeat  the  popular  hymns  to 
the  scientific  and  material  advancement  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  to  the  marvels  of  our  mechanical  in- 
ventions, to  our  colossal  trade,  wealth,  industry,  and 
energy.  We  all  admit  it ;  we  all  know  it  well,  for  it 
is  dinned  into  our  ears  day  and  night  by  the  brazen 
throats  of  a  myriad-voiced  press  and  the  popular 
orators  of  our  age.  As  the  great  orator  of  Athens 
said,  "  no  need  for  long  speeches  to  men  who  knew 
it  all  by  heart."  Not  that  I  doubt,  or  dislike,  or 
undervalue  all  this  material  progress.  I  am  as  heartily 
interested  in  it  as  the  most  up-to-date  editor  or  the 
lightning  leader-writer  of  the  one-cent  press.  I  am 
no  obstructive,  who  desires  a  return  to  the  Middle 
Ages  or  the  narrow  world  of  our  grandfathers.  Men 
of  genius  like  Carlyle  or  Ruskin  who  do  preach  this 
only  make  us  smile,  and  so  far  ruin  the  weight  of  all 
they  say. 

I  am  a  modern,  desirous  to  be  up-to-date  in  all 
things,  and  heartily  fond  of  all  inventions,  "  notions," 
and  appliances  which  do  not  tend  to  degrade  our  lives 
or  drive  us  silly  by  their  rattle  or  their  pace.  Let  us 


THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  247 

give  the  able  editor,  the  demagogue,  and  the  syndi- 
cate promoter  all  he  asks  and  all  he  boasts.  There  is 
another  side  to  the  picture  of  human  life.  And  I  make 
bold  to  say  that,  intellectually,  spiritually,  morally, 
socially,  the  close  of  the  century,  as  contrasted  with  its 
prime,  is  to  my  eyes  a  picture  blurred,  darkened,  and 
out  of  harmony  and  proportion.  It  is  a  fall  from  a 
higher  plane,  with  its  atrocities  in  South  Africa,  its 
desolation  of  two  fine  lands,  its  atrocities  in  China,  in 
Cuba,  in  the  Philippines,  with  its  appalling  famines 
in  India,  its  infamies  in  Asia  Minor,  with  its  hideous 
slums  in  London,  Paris,  Berlin,  New  York,  and 
Chicago,  with  its  recrudescence  of  savagery,  with  its 
exploitation  of  the  labourer,  and  its  apotheosis  of 
Capital. 

And  what  is  the  cause  of  all  this — what  is  the  under- 
lying perversion  of  mind  and  feeling  that  has  set  up 
this  dry  rot  in  our  age  ?  It  is  no  one  thing.  It  is 
a  subtle,  complex,  conglomerate  set  of  causes.  In  the 
first  place,  the  apparent  triumph  of  the  policy  of  Blood 
and  Iron  in  1871,  the  visible  gains  won  by  Force,  Am- 
bition, and  Selfishness.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the 
Franco-German  War  in  any  special  sense  ;  but  of  the 
Bismarckian  policy  as  a  whole.  Bismarck  presented 
to  the  admiring  world  the  type  of  a  practical  and  judi- 
cious Napoleon  Bonaparte,  who  did  not  fail  and  ended, 
not  in  St.  Helena,  but  with  two  hundred  millions  to 
his  account,  which  his  people  laid  out  in  very  profitable 
investments.  This  novel  combination  of  glory,  hero- 
ism, and  good  business  turned  the  heads  of  men  in 


248  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

Europe,  from  the  British  islands  to  the  shores  of 
Tonquin  and  Corea ;  and  perhaps  they  find  a  modest 
echo  on  your  side  of  the  Atlantic  as  well. 

Then  came  the  enormous  multiplication  of  mechani- 
cal contrivances  and  material  advancement.  But,  whilst 
all  this  gave  marvellous  facilities  to  human  life,  it  un- 
doubtedly tended  to  vulgarise  it,  and  stifled  no  small 
part  of  the  poetry  and  romance  of  daily  existence. 
The  lovely  country  of  Shakespeare  became  blackened 
with  furnaces  and  pits.  The  roar  of  the  railroads  dis- 
turbed the  peace  of  Gray's  Elegy  in  a  Churchyard 
and  the  serene  meditations  of  Rydal  Mount.  And 
motors  and  tramcars  invaded  the  quaint  haunts  sacred 
to  the  memory  of  Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  Lamb. 
Even  the  London  of  Pickwick  and  of  Pendennis  has 
vanished ;  and  the  modernised  city,  however  magnifi- 
cent and  convenient,  is  not  the  soil  which  breeds  more 
Pickwicks  or  Wellers.  No  one  denies  that  the  mod- 
ernity of  our  daily  life  has  given  us  vast  facilities, 
but  it  somewhat  tends  to  vulgarise  it. 

The  marvellous  diffusion  of  mechanical  appliances 
for  the  use  of  science,  whilst  it  has  given  us  some  as- 
tonishing means  of  observation,  has  tended  to  sub- 
divide science  into  an  infinite  series  of  specialised  and 
detached  studies.  The  historian  finds  it  necessary  to 
limit  himself  to  his  two  or  three  decades,  or  at  most  a 
century  or  two ;  the  astronomer  is  either  a  strict  nebu- 
list  or  a  confirmed  lunist ;  the  naturalist  spends  his  life 
over  the  particular  bug  which  bears  his  own  honourable 
name.  And  so,  the  philosophy  of  the  Rerum  natura 


THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY  249 

is  relegated  to  popular  manuals.  Synthesis,  or  the 
theory  which  coordinates  real  knowledge,  is  mocked 
at  as  the  vapouring  of  a  crank.  And  the  human  value 
or  usefulness  of  knowledge  is  thought  to  be  vulgar 
curiosity.  The  enormous  mass  of  accumulated  facts, 
and  their  infinitesimal  subdivisions  have  not  only  made 
their  coordination  next  to  impossible,  but  have  made 
the  idea  of  their  coordination  a  dream  like  that  of  the 
"  philosopher's  stone." 

Orthodox  religion  lost  its  creed,  when  its  dogmas 
were  found  to  be  irrational  and  its  history  was  proved 
to  be  fictitious.  Its  sacred  books  were  discredited  as 
substantial  truth  and  were  valued  for  their  literary 
beauty  and  their  sentimental  charm.  The  result  was 
that  the  moral  system  of  orthodoxy  was  in  conflict 
with  the  modern  conscience.  So  the  current  theology 
took  refuge  in  platitudes,  in  sentimental  rhetoric  about 
the  loveliness  of  Jesus  which  nobody  ever  denied,  and 
the  "  secret  of  Jesus,"  of  which  every  one  had  his 
own  interpretation.  Having  paid  this  homage  to  the 
Founder  of  their  religion,  the  churches  broke  forth 
into  hymns  of  triumph  over  the  men  who  carried 
famine,  bloodshed,  ruin,  and  rape  over  the  defenceless 
homes  of  innocent  families  in  Africa  and  in  Asia. 

All  this  time  not  a  word  has  come  from  our  dom- 
inant Philosophy,  or  Science,  or  Religion  to  protest 
against  the  enormities  which  Christian  powers  have 
been  perpetrating  in  China,  enormities  of  which  some 
cannot  be  described  to  the  ears  of  women.  The  Nine- 
teenth Century  has  left  us  a  terrible  legacy  of  prob- 


25O  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

lems  —  moral,  intellectual  political  ^  international  rival- 
ries, industrial  wars,  metaphysical  sophisms,  cloudy 
theosophies,  moral  cancers.  Can  we  of  the  Twentieth 
Century  solve  them  ?  Will  our  electrical  machines 
solve  them,  our  telephones,  our  aerial  telegraphs, 
and  our  X-rays  ?  Will  our  wealth  solve  them  ? 
Or  our  numbers,  our  discoveries,  our  imitative  wit  ? 
Will  the  waving  of  flags  —  whether  with  the  three 
crosses  or  the  forty-five  stars  —  solve  them,  or  will  the 
shouting  doggerel  about  Britannia  or  Columbia  save 
us  ?  Will  our  current  Christianity  save  us  ?  Why  ! 
the  Churches,  Episcopal,  or  Presbyterian,  Baptist  and 
Quakers  have  joined  to  bless  the  buccaneers;  and 
our  Christian  armies,  led  by  the  favourite  lieutenant 
of  the  most  ostentatiously  pious  sovereign  whom 
Europe  has  known  since  Louis  XI,  have  committed 
atrocities  in  China,  in  the  name  of  Christ,  more  abom- 
inable than  those  of  the  Crusades  or  the  Inquisition. 
The  lesson  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  is  that  our 
morality,  our  philosophy,  our  religion  have  broken 
down.  It  is  Mene,  Mene,  Tekely  Upharsin  to  our  con- 
ventional morality,  our  nebulous  philosophy,  our 
hypocritical  religion.  Unless  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury can  recast  morality,  philosophy,  and  religion  we 
shall  go  down  a  steep  place  into  the  sea  like  the  herd 
of  swine. 

We  need  a  social  morality,  an  international  moral- 
ity, based  on  a  genuine  sense  of  altruism.  We  need 
a  solid  philosophy  based  on  proof  and  leading  up  to 
the  highest  moral  ideals  of  active  life.  We  need  a 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  251 

religion  that  shall  have  a  creed  as  certain  as  geometry 
and  the  laws  of  physical  science,  and  as  wide  and  com- 
prehensive as  the  human  race.  But,  as  I  said  before, 
I  am  no  pessimist,  but  a  real  meliorist  with  unshaken 
confidence  in  a  better  time  to  come.  The  Nineteenth 
Century  did  not  exhaust  itself.  It  produced  a  new  and 
systematic  science  of  Sociology,  the  greatest  advance 
of  human  thought  since  the  Copernican  and  Cartesian 
renovation  of  science.  That  new  science  is  instituted, 
however  incomplete  and  however  various  its  forms  as 
yet.  The  systems  of  Comte,  of  Spencer,  of  Hegel 
may  differ.  But  the  conception  of  Sociology  united 
them  all.  Sociology  is  the  contribution  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  to  the  philosophic  evolution  of  Hu- 
manity ;  and  no  century  since  that  of  Aristotle  has 
ever  made  a  contribution  of  deeper  import  and  of 
richer  fruit.  The  Nineteenth  Century  too  evolved 
the  conception  of  Humanity,  the  greatest  conception 
evolved  since  that  of  the  unity  of  the  Godhead ;  and 
with  that  came  the  underlying  conception  of  the 
brotherhood  of  Man,  the  solidarity  of  classes,  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number. 

The  Nineteenth  Century  produced  also  a  definite 
Religion  —  not  a  new  religion — but  the  eternal  im- 
perishable Religion  of  Humanity,  which  existed  in 
germ  at  the  dawn  of  civilisation,  which  will  be  the 
strength  and  consolation  of  the  Last  Man  in  the  Last 
Day  of  earth.  I  do  not  say  this  by  way  of  limiting 
it  to  the  special  sense  that  Auguste  Comte  gave  to 
that  idea.  I  mean  that  religion  of  Humanity,  which 


252  THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

to-day  is  the  secret  hope  and  ideal  at  the  bottom  of 
our  hearts  and  at  the  back  of  our  brains.  I  mean 
that  undefined  but  indestructible  sense  which  is  the 
religion  of  all  good  men  and  of  all  loving  women, 
which  some  choose  to  call  the  ideal  of  Jesus  —  call  it 
what  you  will  —  for  the  religion  of  Humanity  incor- 
porates, adapts,  explains,  and  developes  the  inward 
spirit  of  the  Gospel  and  the  sermons  of  Paul.  But  it 
has  this,  which  neither  the  Gospel  of  Confucius,  nor 
of  Buddha,  nor  of  Jesus,  nor  of  Luther,  nor  of  Wes- 
ley ever  had  or  pretended  to  have.  That  new  char- 
acteristic which  is  peculiar  to  the  religion  of  Humanity 
—  which  every  superhuman  theology  cuts  itself  off 
from  having  —  is  a  grasp  of  the  whole  field  of  human 
history;  intense  sympathy  with  every  son  and  daughter 
of  the  human  family,  of  whatever  race,  skin,  or  type; 
and  above  all,  a  trained  knowledge  of  the  vast  results 
of  science  —  the  will  and  the  wisdom  to  use  this 
knowledge  to  the  furtherance  of  a  higher  civilisation. 


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